Florida Keys, Day 3

This was the day. The one day we came down here for. The one day we actually had anything "planned". The one day I'd been waiting for for months, now. We were going to the Dry Tortugas!!

Don't worry, I had never heard of them until recently, either. Maria has lived in Florida her whole life, and she learned about them from me. Look it up on Wikipedia. Try to find it on a map. Look 68 miles West of Key West. Only get there by boat or floatplane, yet has the largest masonry structure in the western hemisphere on it.

We took the trip with Sunny Days Catamarans, one of the tour companies. It was a well-done trip, providing food and drinks, and a fast way out there. Next time, we are definitely going to camp there for at least 3 days, if not a week or more. Even though it was very small, there was just too much to explore and do.

Key West is waaaaaaay back there, somewhere.



I went straight for the water. Didn't catch it on film, but I walked out to the cement ramp there and slipped. Fortunately my secret ninja training and catlike reflexes kicked in...and I landed flat on my back.





These are "Magnificent Frigatebirds" and just sat there riding the breeze the whole time, never flapping, never moving...



The inner courtyard of the Fort while on the very informative tour. After the tour, we got to wander pretty much where we pleased.


It was really expensive to bring water to the islands (they are called "Dry" Tortugas because there is no fresh water there). Being that they needed to bring water there for the workers building the place, they often chose to use seawater to mix the mortar instead of fresh water. That is why the walls all have this white coating on them in places. It's the salt bleeding out of the mortar.





I have a ton of pictures of the place. I could just post them all, or you could figure out where to sift through them on my photodumper site. But this is interesting: These boats here are called Chugs.



What they are is a mishmash of anything that can be found to make a boat or something like a boat. Then the boater buys a gps which already has the Dry Tortugas programmed into it. This is all done in Cuba, which isn't too far away. Then the Cuban refugees see if their chug can make it all the way to the Dry Tortugas.

Now why would they want to do that?? Well it's simple. While it may be further away than Key West, Key West Has an active Navy base and an active Coast Guard base. The current rules about Cuban refugees and the U.S. are that if they are able to set foot on American Soil, they are granted political asylum (because Cuba is run by a fucked-up commie dicktatorship and all that). If they are intercepted at sea, the Coast Guard sinks their boat, puts them on board their own ship, and deports them back to Cuba, where they will likely be imprisoned and tortured and all that fun shit that goes along with getting caught trying to defect from a fucked-up commie dicktatorship.

Anyway, the Dry Tortugas is American soil. But it is the most remote National Park we have, so all that is there are a handful of park rangers and some maintenance folk...not several active military bases. So the Rangers go running out (and they are VERY well-armed, by the way...Pirates do still exist, ya know...) and welcome the new American resident aliens ashore and make sure they aren't dying or anything. They get transported back to Key West to get their new ID's and stuff later.

They get 1200 of these landings in the Dry Tortugas every year. Not 1200 people...1200 boats. There weren't any on the day we were there, though there were 18 people made it there they day before.

Anyway, after the tour, we explored the fort a little bit, checking out each floor, and the different rooms and roof, and holes that went nowhere.









I've been to the edge...and there I stood lookin' down...



These next 3 show the areas we went snorkeling on the outside of the moat wall:







There was a good amount of sealife along the wall. I don't know if I got any good underwater shots, though. I had issue with my technology, so we'll see!





These were taken by Maria while she was standing on the wall, that's how clear the water is.









But we had to go back, eventually. Talked with a couple who had been camping there the past few days. They never even took their tent out, they just slept on the beach. They loved it.

We had 3-5 foot swells on the way back, and we ran over a floating rope that got caught in one of our props. The first mate had to go cut it off in the middle of nowhere. Other than that, it was a great ride back, and we ate at the first place that wasn't straight from Pirate John's guidebook, finally!