Fort Lauderdale – 5 kilometres walked, 140 kilometres driven
Ana and I were walking up Las Olas Boulevard by 8:30 am and we caught the first #11 westbound bus that came by. After a transfer to a different bus, a longish wait at the airport car rental pickup corridor, then a short drive in a courtesy van, we found ourselves at Easirent Car Rentals and relearned the two cardinal rules about American commando goods and services retailing.
1. What is advertised is not what you get
2. To get what you want, you will have to pay more
The guy at the counter with the bad haircut wearing the Easirent golf tee and forced smile seemed nice enough when he said, “How can I help you?” He certainly did help – helped himself to additional revenue courtesy of our credit card.
Ana had found a good deal on a weekly rental of a five-seater car (read fine print…”subject to availability”). The nice man offered us a cool black convertible Mustang…but to our disappointment it had only two doors and two body-hugging seats in the back, with insufficient space in the trunk to hold our fifth passenger. So we asked what else he had. Nothing. Nothing? Nothing…unless you upgrade. And somehow the move from a convertible Mustang to a base model Chevy Malibu was considered an upgrade. Bang, $150 more.
Where are you going, he said. We don’t know…all over the place. Well, you’ll need to buy the optional electronic toll device because there’s tolls on nearly all the highways and they don’t accept cash anymore. Can we avoid the tolls? Nope. Then why do you call it optional? Well, if you just want to drive around Fort Lauderdale you don’t need it. How much? $14. That’s not bad. Per day. Bang, $110 more.
OK, Kristofor, can you give me your credit card. We’ll pay with Ana’s instead. Can’t do that, the rental is in your name. Change it. I can’t. I don’t have the same credit card we booked the car with, it’s back on the boat. If I add Ana as a secondary driver, then we can use hers. Bang, $90 more.
After some more bullshit with him needing our home vehicle insurance policy details, which we didn’t have so had to sign a waiver, then had another waiver for glass and tire insurance, we finally got our Malibu (for twice what we were supposed to be paying) and peeled out of there in reverse, spraying gravel all over the Easyrent sign, the rest of the rental cars and, unfortunately, some of our fellow customers and a medium sized green iguana chewing on a fly. I laughed like a maniac and ripped off a cop turn like Bo Duke with Rosco P. Coltrane hot on the trail.
Now that we had a car we were excited to drive somewhere, anywhere. We made a quick stop at the boat to grab the kids and I crafted a sizeable stack of ham, cheese, and lettuce and a couple of tuna mayo specials on indestructible Sara Lee white bread. These I put into our hitherto unused hard-bodied cooler along with a selection of cold drinks and some fruit – an instant low budget picnic. Magnus was having trouble deciding on footwear so I offered him my new black leather sandals that Ana had scrounged from a thift store somewhere. He picked one up, inspected it, frowned, and said, “This looks like the kind of shoe little Latino kids get slapped with.”
“So do you want to wear them?”
“Not a chance.”
I slapped him with it but only half-heartedly since he’s only half Portuguese and that’s sort of Latino. I’ve been told Ana’s mom used to beat her brother with a slipper when he was caught misbehaving, so the Latino punishment culture varies somewhat between countries.
I pointed the car to the green Everglades area shown on Google Maps and we rallied down the beautiful concrete Floridian turnpike, laughing with joy when was passed through the $1.25 toll booth without a care. We arrived at the green Everglades part but really didn’t see much of interest. I was expecting it to be swampy and full of alligators and pythons and maybe even the Swamp Thing, but all we saw was a never ending dike on one side of the road and scrubby brush on the other. Major disappointment. Stella found some sort of nature park several miles away, which we were hoping would offer alligator-strewn trails through fascinating mangroves and swamp, but it was just a couple of drainage ponds littered by plastic bottles, grocery bags, and Bud Light cans at the edges with local fisherman tossing nets into the brown sludgy water for god knows what sort of brackish creatures. After some Googling we learned that the closest location to see the anticipated version of the Everglades was nearly an hour away and would cost us $35 for the car and another $32 each to take a tourist trolley with an experienced and very funny guide to entertain us along the way. After a group shudder, we instead drove to Doral Park in a suburb of Miami, ate our sandwiches without plates (just hold it) or napkins (use your arm) and were entertained by Anna’s childhood story of when they once visited this farm with free ranging animals and a lady got attacked by a small monkey who bit a mole off her face. It seems Anna had a very interesting and eventful childhood and I look forward to more stories of unprovoked animal attacks or other violence in the coming weeks.
We found an Aldi and loaded the car up with groceries then stopped at a Target for the ladies to browse deals while I mostly sat with Magnus at the Starbucks and talked about life. On the way back to the boat we stopped at a thrift store that was alive with the spirit of Jesus as piped-in Christian radio infiltrated every corner. I found a boogie board for five bucks and 25 feet of insulated copper strand electrical cable for a buck, which was the deal of the day.
Ana found vacant cavities on the boat to jam all the groceries into then we roasted an Aldi wheel-sized pizza and had drinks. While we waited, we turned on the flashing LED multi-coloured lights in the cabin and had an impromptu dance party. I remembered The Floss and did my best rendition of it. The girls generously withheld any words of humiliation as I was doing a good enough job on my own. It was fun.
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