10 – 13 October 2010
Through CouchSurfing.org I’d emailed a few potential hosts in Fort Lauderdale, I was really hoping to not have to stay in a hostel again as they were all more designed for crew accommodation than travellers and had pretty poor online reviews. I did end up hostelling for one night; sure enough I was in a room with a few wretched looking guys trying to get crew work. Luckily a couch surfer named Miki got back to me and offered me a place to stay for a few nights. It was the beginning of a pivotal change to my travelling, something so cool that you wouldn’t ever do it any other way. You see I’d been craving adventure [I still am] and normal modes of transport between run of the mill hostels just didn’t cut it as adventurous any more. I started my adventure by jumping on the back of Miki’s 1800cc Honda motorcycle and roaring over to see his place. Although exhilarating I can’t say I’m a big fan of riding on the back of those things, half way through the trip while tearing down the roads in a t-shirt and no helmet I concluded it was one of the stupider decisions I’d made while travelling. An adventure no less, but I decided to be a little pickier about which adventures I embarked on.
Miki although older than myself and different in many ways still turned out to be a superb example of a couch surfing host. A very open, trusting and friendly individual right from the start; Miki really improved my time in Florida. The benefit of Couch Surfing over hostelling is the personalisation of knowledge, personal involvement and meeting different people. With Miki I got a little bit of personal involvement, like when we spent a night drinking his wicked White Russians. But mostly Miki helped by personalising his knowledge of the area to what I was looking for – essentially he assisted me in having a good time. I was able to get a free round of go-karting where he worked and use his work arcade gaming card for unlimited gaming. Another day Miki suggested I go on the Jungle Queen tour which proved well worth while; I especially enjoyed the alligator wrestling show which I will do another post on later as soon as I get some video editing software working.
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The Jungle Queen took us through the natural and man made waterways of Fort Lauderdale while our commentator enthusiastically pointing out celebrity houses and provided noteworthy gossip. I use the term loosely as our commentator obviously thought what he was saying was noteworthy, but really, is there such a thing as noteworthy gossip?
On the 13th I bid farewell to Miki and I flew to Washington DC, my flight proved rather troublesome.