Around The World – Sanibel Island, Florida
My goal on this leg of the trip was to make the short trip between Tampa and Sanibel Island on the west coast of Florida, to meet up with Elan Bush and Kate Flagg Bush again and crash on the couch for a night, then continue on to Miami.
In Tampa, I grabbed an Uber to the Greyhound bus station. I was there an hour early, as the instructions say, but of course that was way too early because there’s no security to go through like an airport. It turned out to be entertaining though. The 3:30 bus to somewhere was cancelled and a man started screaming obscenities to the point where the woman running the ticket desk got on the loudspeaker and chewed him out. This is the stuff sit-coms are made of.
Our departure time came and went. Punctuality is not a strong suit of the Greyhound company, it appears. They finally called us for boarding and then 5 seconds later told us to stop, 10 more minutes to wait. Turns out they were loading a woman in a wheelchair into the bus. It’s a pretty sophisticated system where 4 seats in the bus articulate to make an open spot, then the side of the bus opens up and a hydraulic ramp comes down, loads up the wheelchair lady and then loads her back into place. Hats off to Greyhound for handicap accessibility! The bus also has a 120V outlet for each seat and free wifi, although they block streaming web sites like youtube as they can’t handle the bandwidth, similar to most airplane wifi systems.
I arrived unscathed at the Fort Myers bus station where Elan, Kate, daughter Danya and wee dog Daisy picked me up. We went to a waterside seafood restaurant where I had a pasta and shrimp dish where despite earlier reports, I was quite satisfied. I then managed to eat all but a tiny bit of a double fudge brownie.
Back to the condo, we prepared the pull-out couch, best I’ve had on my trip so far. Luxury!
Woke up the next morning and got ready to go kayaking. We packed up Elan’s inflatable kayak and drove over to the kayak rental shop and boat ramp at the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. It seemed like pretty much the whole island was a wildlife refuge. I booked a single kayak and we paddled out into the sheltered bay a bit then turned left into a mangrove area and followed a path helpfully numbered so we wouldn’t get lost. We saw a lot of birds including ospreys, ibises and several species of heron. No manatees though… It was very peaceful in the mangroves, but getting back we had to fight the choppy waves and a strong wind. I took a bit of video on the GoPro.
Back to the condo, I then jumped on a bike for a ride around the island. It’s narrow and long and deceptively small on the map, much to my chagrin later. I decided to head towards the lighthouse at the end of the island, following the central road and then coming back on the coastal road. I passed the Re/Max insurance agent where I saw a Tesla parked earlier, but it was gone. I stopped in and talked with the receiptionist, she said he might be back later. Although the island is very flat, it was hot and I always seemed to be riding into the wind, no matter what direction I was going. I stopped for iced chocoloate at a coffee shop, looked at amazing shells at the main shell shop in town and then had lemon sorbet and strachiatella gelato at an ice cream shop. I finally made it to the lighthouse, took off my shirt and shoes and went for a walk down the beach where I saw a dolphin making its way parallel to the shore, that’s the last clip on the video. Stopped again at the Re/Max on the way home but still no Tesla.
Back at the condo, I did a rush load of laundry and of course forgot my mesh laundry bag so Kate mailed it to me in Miami. We had a great dinner of bbq shrimp, bbq romaine lettuce half-bunches (which I’ve never had but was very good with drizzled olive oil and salt) and veggies, and no onions!
After dinner Elan and Kate drove me to the bus station and I was off to Miami. Got an Uber from the bus station at midnight to my Airbnb house, met Eric the live-in Airbnb host and crashed at about 2 AM.
