Miami, oh I wish I hadn't spent a day on the beach!

Arrived in Miami, and wondered where it was we had booked to stay.  After a very confusing few minutes (signing in American airports seems to be similar to that on roads), we found a phone box and rang who we thought we had booked with.  It was them - hurray!  We jumped in a cab, and headed to South Beach, where our hotel/hostel was located.

The weather in Miami was absolutely beautiful, and the on the cab ride in everything looked exactly like on the tele - palm trees, blue skies, bluey-green water and white sand.  Nice.

We checked into our room, but that didn´t last long.  I was sitting on my bed, when I felt something bite me.  I looked down and saw something crawl over me.  I pointed it out to Mike, who advised that I move away from the bed and not get it in that.  That seemed like sensible advice, so I moved over to the door before smacking it (sorry bug).  When I returned to where I had been sitting though, we noticed that the wall above the beds and both headboards were absolutely crawling with the things.  It was pretty gross.  So I phoned down to the reception, and the manager was sent up.  He told us that didn´t have another room for four people, but that we could have 2 double rooms, and that they weren´t really bugs.  It was all very matter of fact, there was certainly no apology in there!  The new rooms weren´t much better, though the bugs had kindly chosen to live in the bathroom instead.

We took a strole down Ocean Drive, and stopped for some food.  After a spell in Mexico, we had forgotten about American food portion size, and I was presented with the largest salad known to man.  It was pretty nice though.

We headed back to the infested hostel, and got changed for a night out.  There was a communal area out the back, with a pool, so we headed out there and got chatting a few people, including an English guy who had been travelling loads, and was planning to move to Ecuador soon.  That was quite exciting, since that was our next stop!

We had been told that Monday night was pretty quiet, but since we were travelling again on the Wednesday, it was gonna be our only night out in Miami.  We went to a few bars, then headed to a club Rick had been told about.  It turned out we were too early, so went to another bar before heading back.  We were handed some free entry fliers on the way back too, which was pretty handy.  When we got there, there was what appeared to be a queue outside, although everyone was just milling around the door.  I laughed my head off when some guy explained to us what was going on.  Everyone was standing there, posing.  If the bouncers were impressed, you got invited in.  What a crock of s***.  Anyways, they eventually let us in.  I´ve never seen anything so pretentious in my life.

That is, until I went inside.  A guy with a mad hat (he´s obviously artistic, he has a mad hat) was standing in front of a blank canvas, staring at it, as if he was conjuring up a muse for his work.  After much thought, he started frantically throwing his brush around, until the outline of a face appeared.  He would then stop, and have a wee think about what he was going to do next, before returning to his frantic brushstroke action.  I swear, the way he was acting you´d think he had just invented the idea of putting a nose and two eyes on a face.  Anyway, the finished work was alright, but nothing to write home about.  He was acting like it was the next thing to be auctioned in Christie´s.  I had to go up and have my photo taken with him, and couldn´t resist telling him what a massive fan of his work I was.  He was a bit of an ass.

We headed to another club after that, but didn´t stay long, and headed back soon after.

The next day was spent at the beach, so of course I covered myself from head to toe in suncream first.  The P20 stuff, that only had to be applied once a day, how convenient for a day at the beach.  Mike and I headed down at about 12.30, so I very sensible lay in the shade for the first hour or so, avoiding the heat of the midday sun.  I jumped in and out of the water a couple of times - it was unbelievable, there wasn´t the slightest coldness about it.  The beach itself was lovely, the sand was so white.  I lay in the sun for a couple of hours, and then got back in the shade when the others arrived, since I figured I had had enough.  Unfortunately, despite all my best efforts, I misjudged this timing completely, and ended up absolutely scorched.  Not nice.

Back at the hostel, we all underwent some preventative itching treatment (the less said about that the better!), and Mike and I headed out to get food for everyone.  That ended up taking ages, since the pizza place Rick had asked us to pick up his tea from, which was advertised as 'South Beach's best kept secret', turned out to be just that.  We returned to find that Rick and Nikki had been sitting in the boys room, and Rick got the fright of his life when Nikki screamed her head off.  Understandably though, since she had just seen a cockroach crawl across the ceiling, then jump down towards them on the bed.  Ok, so he wasn´t as big as some of the cockroaches in say, S. E. Asia, but seriously, this fella was big.  I was looking forward to checking out of this place.

After a quick look on the net for somewhere to stay in Quito for the next night, we all headed to bed.

The next day was Mike´s birthday, so after a quick candle lit breakfast of chocolate brownies all-round, he headed off to treat himself to a haircut at Vidall Sasoon (posh git).  We all went for breakfast, and wandered round the shops for a bit.  The sun was pretty strong, and to say that the sunburn smarted a little would be a bit of an understatement.  After a while, it was back to the hostel, taxi, airport, and the end of a short but bittersweet trip to Miami.

Mozzie bite status:  No bites, but oh my god the sunburn hurts.

Click here for all the Miami photos (not many, I´m afraid).