After a truly wonderful four days here in Ft. Lauderdale, we’re pushing south tomorrow. We’ll hop outside the waterway for a sail down to Miami, which should be a nice day of westerly winds following the wild weather that blew through earlier tonight. (Fortunately most of the intensity that crossed the state today disappated before it got to us- we’ve had a gorgeous sunny day (albeit windy), only recently punctuated by a five minute rain storm.)
Thanks to our generous hosts here, we’ve filled our tanks, completed some tasks onboard (waterproofed the bimini, finished installing netting on the starboard side to hold gear in, washed the boat down, etc.) and spent a LOT of time in the pool.
You’re about to think to yourself ‘enough already about the birds!’, but seriously. The birds. We went for a stroll in the neighborhood and looked up to see a peacock heading our way down the sidewalk. As in, a real peacock. As in, not in a zoo. (Do I need to get out more?) It really was bizarre, and we watched it casually cruise into a neighbor’s driveway, not caring one tail feather about us standing there goggling at it.
The canals that reach into the city like hundreds of fingers make narrow strips of land packed with giant estates and accessed by charming little bridges; the walk gave us plenty to gawk at once more. But really, who needs interesting architecture and the work of every kind of contractor possible to check out when you have fancy garbage trucks?
Later in the day we saw a flock of bright green birds swarm into a palm overhead. As we learned from our hostess, they are non-native wild parrots that were once upon a time released from domesticity. As seems to happen, they are plenty of them now, squawking this way and that, asking for crackers. (Kidding, except for the godforsaken squawking.)
More pool time today was welcomed by this guy,
who I have come to think is a black crowned night heron, but I could be wrong. Violet practically tickled his toes from the water before he flew off though; we’re starting to be ‘those’ bird people.
Tomorrow we’ll hopefully shift from bird to fish, since Andy worked on our rod tonight and I just know that a mahi is planning on swimming out of the Gulf Stream to snag our line. (I did hear recently that bananas on board are bad luck for fishing, so hopefully I remember to serve them all for breakfast.)
