There’s a magical moment on every trip when I think: “This is it! This is the place I crossed the Earth for and it’s everything I imagined it to be.”
My first few days in the Florida Keys had been very enjoyable but I’d yet to have that moment. In Key Largo, I spent a couple of nights on a houseboat, getting up before sunrise to sup coffee on the upper deck while pelicans passed overhead. My first night had involved a meal of exceptional seafood while I marvelled at just how many of the silver-bearded diners around me resembled the writer Ernest Hemingway. And on an eco-boat trip, I had seen manatees and birdlife galore.
But that moment – the one when I had to pinch myself and think, “Hey, I’m here, really here in the Florida Keys” – didn’t arrive until I was driving the Overseas Highway across Seven Mile Bridge. This is one of the longest causeways in the world, yet just one of 42 bridges that link the 182km island chain. With aquamarine water shimmering on both sides, I found myself in wonder at the geography of the Keys and how being surrounded by so much ocean had defined life here and given it the unique flavour that is now its draw.
The Florida Keys has these moments that creep up on you. Its bountiful waters once stocked the fisheries and fuelled the sporting exploits of the likes of Hemingway and others, but these days it is about celebrating what is here more than what you can
