It's a Gator wasteland....

On the penultimate day of Anne's (The Day After Yesterday) holiday we went to Gatorland... you can read her blog post about it here..


Always looking for the next exciting thing we had exhausted all the other theme parks in Orlando on her previous trips and I was racking my brains for something new and improved...


Anne, how do you fancy a day out with some local wildlife and the possibility of some animal massacre?


Always up for anything Anne was waiting by the door, ready to go (for once) before you could say Gator handbag, and we were off!


I wasn't holding out much hope.. theme parks in Orlando normally run close to $80 for the day, so finding out it was only a quarter of this filled me with foreboding...

Not much of a welcome!

I was a touch worried when we got in and saw hundreds of tiny gators in tiny pools .. although it was a touch amusing to see the turtle who was obviously confused about his sexuality!

George the confused turtle

what had I done? and they must have heard that Anne was on her way..

They'd heard Anne was on her way and posted signs..

Thieving bird hanging around snack bar!

Anne seemed happy enough, it's not like you have a ton of gators in deepest, darkest Oxfordshire...and then she saw that there was a Gator jumping show on 5 mins into us getting there... we hot footed it down to the 'show' and got ourselves a prime position ready for the action.. if I tell you that country music was blaring out from the speakers and there was a lot of camo around you'll know who our fellow spectators were....


Anyway on to the show...

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Actually it was pretty entertaining and the Gators were awesome!


For your education....American Alligators have the strongest laboratory measured bite of any living animal, measured at up to 9,452 newtons.. !!


Anyway after not feeding Anne to the gators we happened on the most amazing wildlife preserve.. 130 gators and hundreds of thousands of birds... the boardwalks and observation towers are very organic in wood and we spent a good hour walking around looking at the flora, fauna and of course Alligators.. (are they fauna?)

Baby birds (from the Gatorland website)

Baby birds from my phone.. camera had died at this point, or broken from taken pictures of Anne?

The boardwalks through the nature reserve were stunning...

Some of the nature was quite frankly weird...

This little bugger tried to eat my ankles!

Of course you can't go to Gatorland and not wonder at the the Gators.. they are fantastic, prehistoric animals and some of them are pretty scary too!

Albino monster....

This little man saw Anne's ankles and was straight out!

Mummy & Daddy of the little one!

Is that pasty human lunch?

Now that will be a surprise for any unsuspecting birds!

Is it me or does this one look preggers?

Can you say lunch?

Can you say dessert..... fly bird.. it's not safe there

Suffice to say we had a totally unexpected great day and I hope to introduce more people to Gatorland in the future...




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Hurricanes....

Since moving to Florida I have developed somewhat of a fascination with hurricanes, and I don't mean the University of Miami Football program, although granted there's probably something to be said for fit young athletes running around a football field....my husband would kill me though if I wasn't cheering for the Gators, http://www.gatorzone.com/.

No I mean the blow you away, massive storms that hit the south eastern US, Caribbean and Mexico .The Atlantic hurricane season is from June 1 to November 30, but most hurricanes occur during the fall (autumn) months, but basically we're in it now...

To anyone from the UK who is not used to such huge weather formations (although my family went though the The Great Storm of 1987 which had hurricane force winds - read about this Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Storm_of_1987 )the thought of a hurricane is an extremely scary prospect. Vivid in all our memories are the scenes from New Orleans (Hurricane Katrina) and last year Galveston (Hurricane Ike). Those cities had mandatory evacuations and still people chose to stay. It focuses the mind....what would I do in a hurricane situation?

Hurricane Katrina...simply huge

As Florida residents we are reminded each year to be hurricane prepared.... to know our evacuation routes ( I see them posted on I95 each week - the route out of Florida into Georgia).. but many are complacent, especially with a major storm not hitting Florida in the last few years. We should be hurricane prepared... although Fema's advice to 'Consider building a safe room.' seems a little out of most peoples budgets!

So this year I am trying to ready myself for hurricane season. I have my plastic box full of essentials - from tins of food to a first aid kit, extra gas for the barbie in case we have no power for days and it's the only way of cooking, and I'll make sure I have a battery powered radio and a car charger for my cell phone...oh and lots of water!... I have bookmarked the National Hurricane Center http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index.shtml - and I obsessively look everyday to make sure nothing nasty looking is starting to loom.... I don't worry about them, but I don't want to be one of those people corralled into a football stadium with nothing...fingers crossed Central Florida will escape any major damage this year too.

So you've cancelled your summer holiday to Florida now!! don't despair, the sun shines all year here! and don't worry about Gary, he says he'll be OK as long as he has his chewy stick