vana, sinay, and our friends from work jb and ah just got back from the everglades. on friday after work we drove down to miami, where we went to some really cool artsy bars in wynwood. the five of us crammed into one bedroom in an air bnb where the host's parents were staying in the other room. we weren't really sure what this was going to be like but our new ecuadorian parents roberto and ximena were the nicest people ever and made us all scrambled eggs and brownies for breakfast. there was a sweet tiny sheep-like dog named lily and she was the sweetest cutest cleanest half-bichon half-cocker-spaniel creature and all she wanted to do was sit in roberto's lap all day even though she was a little too big.
from miami we drove down to the everglades, where we rented canoes to row 4 miles to our campsite. we loaded vana and jb into one canoe with all the gear and ah and i rowed the other canoe with sinay in the middle. as we rowed you could see fish jumping out of the water, sometimes several feet high, and you could only imagine the swamp creatures that must've been chasing them. after 3 hours of rowing we found a horrendous little beach to pitch camp. somehow ah made a stove out of an aluminum can, a penny, and some everclear. as soon as the sun started to suggest to set, clouds of millions of 'no-see-'em's' - tiny biting flies - appeared and descended upon us, driving the 5 of us into a two-person tent to sweat profusely together and cower in fear. once it was night the fireflies came out and were a wondrous sight to behold, blinking magically near and far while the sky was wild with stars. vana and i shared a tent and the ground was so hard and uneven and the ocean was so loud and there were so many mosquitoes inside our tent and the night had gone from blisteringly hot to extremely cold that i hardly slept a wink and once even sat up and wondered when this night would be over. in the morning i woke absolutely smothered in mosquito bites. they're so profusely and densely dispersed on my arms and my back and full side torso that i look like a smallpox victim. we extremely wanted to get the hell out of this campsite which had been so little payoff for all the hard work it had taken to get there, and we knew the return would be worse because this time both the wind and the tide would be against us. the tide was at its lowest and the winds gusted at 11-15 mph so that it literally took 4.5 hours for us to row back to the visitor center.
from miami we drove down to the everglades, where we rented canoes to row 4 miles to our campsite. we loaded vana and jb into one canoe with all the gear and ah and i rowed the other canoe with sinay in the middle. as we rowed you could see fish jumping out of the water, sometimes several feet high, and you could only imagine the swamp creatures that must've been chasing them. after 3 hours of rowing we found a horrendous little beach to pitch camp. somehow ah made a stove out of an aluminum can, a penny, and some everclear. as soon as the sun started to suggest to set, clouds of millions of 'no-see-'em's' - tiny biting flies - appeared and descended upon us, driving the 5 of us into a two-person tent to sweat profusely together and cower in fear. once it was night the fireflies came out and were a wondrous sight to behold, blinking magically near and far while the sky was wild with stars. vana and i shared a tent and the ground was so hard and uneven and the ocean was so loud and there were so many mosquitoes inside our tent and the night had gone from blisteringly hot to extremely cold that i hardly slept a wink and once even sat up and wondered when this night would be over. in the morning i woke absolutely smothered in mosquito bites. they're so profusely and densely dispersed on my arms and my back and full side torso that i look like a smallpox victim. we extremely wanted to get the hell out of this campsite which had been so little payoff for all the hard work it had taken to get there, and we knew the return would be worse because this time both the wind and the tide would be against us. the tide was at its lowest and the winds gusted at 11-15 mph so that it literally took 4.5 hours for us to row back to the visitor center.
