Miami....in Spanish, the last bit
Trip Start
Mar 29, 2010
1
35
Trip End
Jul 31, 2010
Miami, Florida
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
On checking in I was asked for my American Visa waiver number…what….never heard of it !!! I was told that I couldn’t check in without it, it was a new thing that had come in…apparently. The woman at the check in desk suggested that I get out my laptop, log on and register there, "I only need a number she said", great…. So I unpack the laptop at the desk and attempted to log on to the net..of course I couldn’t get on so she said I should go to the food court and try there…”don’t worry she said, you have 15 minutes until we close check-in !
So I lugged all my bags upstairs (of course) to the food court, got on to the web site, registered to go to America and got a number, lugged the bags back down to the check-in desk and finally got a boarding pass, got to the gate with 5 minutes to spare only to find the plane was delayed 20 minutes…oh well, just another travelling day !!
I arrived in Miami with no problems and got a cab to Miami Beach where the hotel was. Now first thing I noticed, apart from the obvious skyline of the city, and the wide open roads and big cars was that although I was in the USA I could have still been in Latin America. Spanish was everywhere and people spoke Spanish to you before English…I liked it !!
As I only basically had one full day I took a city tour…first stop..Little Havana. Well, who needs to go to Cuba, its right here in Miami. Cigar shops, dominos the lot, just cleaner….the tour took me around the famous parts, movie star houses etc and made you realise just how much money some people have..(what I could do with that !!!). But sooner rather than later my trip was quickly coming to the end and before long I found myself on a plane to LA for my connection to Australia.
A five hour flight to LA, a six hour wait and a fifteen hour flight to Brisbane gave me a lot of time to reflect the past 4 months….what I had achieved, what I gone through, people I had meet, places I had seen and just a general satisfaction of how good it had all gone, pretty much to plan…if there ever was one !! The mixed emotions of coming home, seeing family and friends and ending the trip is a weird feeling. Good to be seeing everyone but sad because it’s over and all you can do is take it as it comes.
Was this trip life changing…no I don’t think so, but it gives you lots of ideas to change your life if you want. To me its just adding to the experience of life, seeing different cultures, people and views does that, you have to take it all in and use it the best way that suits you. Everyone takes different things from travelling but I think none of its bad, (even if you have had a bad experience) you just have to take the positives from it. Not that I had any “bad “ experiences, to me it was all good, even when things maybe weren’t going exactly how you wanted, that’s what you should take from travelling.
So in summing up I suppose I look back at all the things I have mention above, and feel good in the fact that with all the people and experiences I had……. the 12,500 klm on the bike and 10 countries proved to me….It really was “JUST ME AND MY SHADOW”.
