Just a little bit to add to yesterday’s blog, we decided we
had enjoyed lunch so much at Safe Harbour Restaurant, that we returned for
dinner and tried some other delicious seafood dishes. We were up early again and
on the road heading for Tampa Bay, our next stop. We had been told about some
beautiful spots on the way and so needed the time to call into some of them. We
decided to take the scenic route along the very narrow Guana Tolomato Matanzas
national Park, peninsula which probably was only 200mts wide in some parts. It lies
between the Atlantic Ocean and the Guana and Tolonmato Rivers. We hopped out at out one spot and walked to
the spectacular beach….which had hardly anyone on it. We passed many million $
mansions and were wishing we had the money to live or stay here. We had second
thoughts when we noticed the house blocks on the beachside becoming narrower
and narrower. We got out of the car at Vilano beach and had a look here and
noticed that many of the homes on the beach had suffered storm damage with
undermining etc. Some were being pulled down and others were installing huge
(and expensive) retaining walls. Speaking to some locals we found out that this
is the area in Florida that featured in our news a couple of years ago where
after severe storms and caused several million$ homes to fall into the sea
after hurricanes. From here we drove to
the historic village of St Augustine. We looked around here as we may return
one later in our trip and quite a few people had recommended this area to us. Moving
on, our next stop was the famous Daytona Beach. Paul was in his element and I
(being My Father’s daughter) enjoyed this area too. The beach area had so much
information about the first car and motor-bike racing from about 1903 onwards. Sir
Malcolm Campbell (Sir Donald Campbell’s father) was one of the first racers
along this beach in a car called “The Bluebird”. We decided we couldn’t leave
Daytona without a quick visit to the race-track. Paul was so excited!! We ended
up doing a fantastic 90 minute tour where we learnt so much. We were allowed to
walk on the track and got out of our little tour carriage at the start/finish
line. Here the track is at an angle of 18˚. It was hard enough climbing it here
and we were amazed to find out that some parts of the track have a 32˚ angle!
We all enjoyed the tour despite the heat and humidity. Following this we really
need to make tracks to get to Tampa Bay. It was well after 3PM. We arrived at
our accommodation in Tampa around 6PM after doing some grocery shopping. The trickiest
part for us was negotiating all the huge road-works going on in Orlando as we drove
through the city. We were in a “carpark” for a while!
PS, Helen wrote this while drinking a Jim Beam and coke, go figure...PPS, Map has been updated..
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