….and would like to tell you about it, but
first an update on our hoped-for chocolatada in San Bernardino in December. We’re
very close to being able to sponsor a full-blown food, candy, clown and toys
chocolatada for both pronoeis in that
village. Neither pronoei has the space for a joint chocolatada but the primary
school located there has plenty of room and has all but promised to let us use
it. We’ll hear for certain some day this week. Our target date is Saturday
December 20. We’re only a few donations away from providing those 48 kids with
a day they will remember for a long time. We need to start shopping for toys
now, before prices go up. If you can help us please visit
the Promesa
Peru webpage. Thank you. Okay…on to the trip to the USA.
We began with a few days in Miami where we
spent quality time with Dino and Sara Luisa; friends we hadn’t seen in four
years. When not with them we visited beaches and just generally looked around. From
Miami we drove ‘alligator alley’ to Ft. Meyers and then Interstate 75 to
Clearwater Beach. I was last there 35 years ago when a friend and I drove our
motorcycles from Wisconsin to visit. I was looking forward to showing the Adams
Mark hotel to Maribel, with its tiki shack on the beach where my friend and I
had consumed vast quantities of Piña Coladas. That didn’t happen because Adams Mark isn’t
there anymore. In its place is a construction project. We enjoyed 3 days of relaxation;
walking the beaches, taking photos of the sunset from Pier 60, eating at the
many fine restaurants, and doing other touristy things like cruising on the
gulf looking for dolphins (there are 5 or 6 tour operators - we chose the Sea Screamer).
From Clearwater Beach we drove to Cocoa
Beach, mostly for the purpose of being near to the Kennedy Space Center. Cocoa
Beach is completely different from Clearwater Beach in that it is not tourist
oriented at all. There’s not much happening at the Cocoa Beach pier, and nothing
to see when walking the beach. Merritt Island provides a lot of shopping
opportunities and we did take advantage of that.
We spent an entire day – from 9:00am to
5:00pm at the Kennedy Space Center and could have used more time. There is so
much to see and do if you’re interested in the history and workings of the
space program. For us the highlight was viewing the Atlantis space shuttle. The
shuttle, rockets, spacesuits etc are so much more impressive in person than in
photos.
We finished our Florida adventure in Miami
with two days of marathon shopping at the Westland, Dadeland and Dolphin Malls. We had
sunshine every single day. The Lima to Miami and return flights on LAN airline
is about 5 ½ hours… a little lengthy for me so as an experiment we chose to
stop in Bogota Columbia on the return trip. That broke up the flight into two 3
hour segments, which was good, but the 7 hour layover plus being limited to the
‘international connection’ section of the airport was too long. We won’t do
that again.
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