What an Ordeal! - Dulcinea

We departed Grand Bahamas, wow what an ordeal! At the airport Owen bought a bottle of Kalik beer to keep on the boat (the boat make is Kalik) and they wouldnt let him through with it full so he had to chug it all back. We were also forced to throw out a bottle of water and deoderant, what we are going to make with water deoderant and a bottle of beer I'm not sure. Next we went through security, we had to unpack our bags for them then they looked through our boarding pass circled Roes surname then gave him the full patt down service. Next we had to do the American imigrtion check in process in the bahamas as the flight is pretty much treated as a domestic flight, they where rude and treated you like criminals. Finally we got through and sat and waited for our flight. We thought that was the worst of it.

The night before our flight we decided it would be easier to hire a car for a few days as we could hire it for about the same price as the shuttle to Fort Lauderdale. I booked at Thrifty online and got the grand total of $134. We figured that wasnt a bad deal, so we headed to the rental car building and lined up at Thrifty for a good 10 minutes. When we where finally served the man went through all the extras and bits and pieces, he informed me I could pay when we took the car back and handed me the final bill. Now I expected they may whack on 20 bucks of taxes etc as that seems to be the deal here but I was shocked when I saw it was $356. Somehow adding a tolls card, an extra driver and insurance (which I thought we already had) brought the bill up that much. We told them to stuff it and I went to find us another deal. I eventually got a car at EZ-Rentals who didnt have any little cars left but gave me a big bugger of a car for the little car price.

Roe put his hand up to be our designated driver, Owen the navman and I sat in the back seat looking out the window adding my 2 cents when I felt the need. So we set off, Owen and I both reminding Roe on occasion what side of the road he needs to turn onto. We decided to be cheap skates and not take the toll card so we had to navigate our way around Miami. We pulled up at Wendys for some dinner, walked in and all the customers stared at us like a tourist attraction, we then where greeted by a woman waiting for her food who had all gold teeth. We ordered our food and the lady behind the counter informed us that we had stopped in the middle of the Bronx for our tea.... OOPS, she told us we will be all good just dont head to far in the direction we had just come from! The best moment for us was a guy walked in picked up a handfull of plastic cutlery, yelling at the counter crew the whole time. It did seem like a friendly argument though, there was laughing and no blood! We finished our dinner in the Bronx (small combo I might add that was easilly bigger than our regular combos back home) and headed back on our merry way.

We are staying in Days Inn, Fort Lauderdale, we turned up the same day as the springbreakers so it is party central here. We are all feeling rather old here, there is constant oonce oonce music, people channeling there elephant ways stomping back and forth, someones got a vuvuzela and occasionally there is headboard banging that lasts about a minute, and thats just above our paper thin walled room. What I have seen so far of Fort Lauderdale is nice though, the city itself its quite cool, but the Spring Break atmosphere is crazy and the drinks (and food) are HUGE! The city really is where the togs, togs, undies ice cream add we have in NZ is based on though, people just wander the streets in their bikinis or with there tops off.