It's half past ten in the morning. Miami it was an hour and ninety kilometers behind. We had also left the soggy, green expanse of the Southern Glades and were continuing toward the origins of US Hwy 1, largely called the Overseas Highway because its asphalt and concrete structure rested on the sea.
This emblematic road in the United States took us through the amphibious region of the Sounds of the Florida Keys into the Florida Keys, sometimes through elevated viaducts facing the vast expanse of mangroves and flooded groves, sometimes through dirt roads, but where fences and successive prohibitive signs kept the surrounding landscape inaccessible. .
No wonder. Like the famous Everglades, the Southern Glades and its marine expanse remain wild for a while.
Swampy and labyrinthine, they are home to species such as American crocodiles, alligators and Florida panthers (endemic cougars) that, faced with need and opportunity, would not waste a human meal.
It is, therefore, with some relief that we see a detour appear in the road to a stronghold where, everything seemed, we could get out of the car safely and unwind our legs.
Pelican Cay RV park: An Unusual Refuge from the Glades
A sign signaled the eminence of a Pelican Cay RV park. A second signal warned that we were in an "Crocodile Crossing” and a graffiti print on the wall that delimited the road specified that it was the crossing area of the US1 900136 reptiles.
Cataloged identification of a Crocodile Crossing on its way to Key Largo.
The authorities had the animals and their movements cataloged and controlled. Unlike us who quickly suspect that we shouldn't stay there much longer.
We come with a car park and a private and guarded recreation complex to match. Before reaching the entrance portico, a new notice with translation into Spanish calls our attention "No coolers, No Outside Food or Beverage".
Owners took their right to profit seriously. In such a way that the security guard responsible for the gate makes us open the trunk and searches the cabin and the trunk in search of transgressions.
We tell him we're just going to take a look around the place. The employee relaxes from his duties and grants us entry.
An Elaborate Basis for Fisheries
We pass through a large open bar with a resort look.
Only on the other side did we realize that we were on the edge of one of the many arms of the sea that crossed the region, one called Manatee Creek that connected that sliver of land to the marine immensity of the Florida Keys.
Detached sailboat on Manatee Creek, a few kilometers from Key Largo
In the absence of sand, taking into account the animal danger of those waters, the complex functioned as one of the countless dens where Florida fishermen stayed.
From where they set sail for offshore fishing, where they lived together and exchanged their adventures on well-watered nights.
The establishment's own rooms, on stilts, faced the canal.
Instead of cars – as was the case in almost all the motels spread across the United States – had at the doors docks and launches equipped with large fishing rods.
We sat for a few moments examining the place. We also followed the departure of two of these vessels to the high seas. Then we resumed our own journey.
Towards Florida's Long Stepping Stone
From there, US Hwy 1 continued southwest until it encountered the long barrier of land that separated the Florida Keys from the Caribbean Sea. We intersected it at Key Largo, the largest of the Keys (islets), almost 53 km long. Key Largo is a diving mecca.
Its south coast overlooks a well-preserved coral reef that attracts snorkelers and divers in droves to its John PennenKamp Coral Reef State Park, the world's first underwater park. USA
When we passed there, the strong wind and a persistent layer of clouds reduced underwater visibility to almost nothing.
Keen to keep the seductive and tropical reputation of that threshold of the Caribbean intact, we remain on land.
We explored how American vacationers were entertained there, devoted to kayaking expeditions and paddle board among the mangroves, to American football passes or readings in the coves hidden by the greenery of the seashore.
Meanwhile it starts to rain. It was the ideal pretext to cut short our return to the road. We were scheduled to stay in Islamorada. The day's destination was 40km away. In this stretch, the splendid and bold engineering of the Overseas Highway would start to surprise us.
Travel through the history of the Florida Keys
Around 1920, Florida's peculiar, island expanse sparked great interest from real estate investors.
Interested in valuing thousands of hectares on the edge of the archipelago that would delight the nation's fishing community, these investors allied themselves with the Miami Motor Club.
With the railway now complete and the ferry service that transported vehicles to certain areas insufficient, it seemed to everyone that the construction of a road would not only be feasible but urgent.
Little by little and against successive setbacks, the project was completed even though the spaces between the most distant islands continued to depend on ferries.
Sign indicates access to the Overseas Highway, a succession of bridges over the eastern edge of the Gulf of Mexico.
After the financial difficulties of the Great Depression of the 30s, work was resumed.
Thousands of men, still disqualified from participating in the First World War and lacking income, built a long, unique marine highway, much of it based on fixed pillars on the seabed.
In 1935, a category 5 cyclone swept through the area.
It destroyed much of the road infrastructure and killed 400 workers, more than half of whom were veterans of the First World War and, in some cases, also their families. The catastrophe caused authorities to abort construction.
Once the intense controversy raised by the hurricane had dissipated, it would be resumed on a different path.
The complete Overseas Highway from South Florida to Key West that we were now driving on would not open until 1938.
The following year, President Roosevelt toured it with due pomp and circumstance.
Sol illuminates one of the long concrete decks on the Overseas Highway.
From Key Largo, we descend through the narrow strip of land that, as if for geological mercy, the millennia bequeathed to the Caribbean Sea.
The Overseas Highway was imposed on the biggest of all Florida keys, a long chain that stretches from Biscaine Bay, south of Miami, and extends for almost 200km to the unlikely peninsular extreme of Key West, the largest of its cities.
Speedboats anchored in a Lower Matecumbe Key sea arm.
Seven Mile Bridge and a few more Miles to Key West
Arriving in Islamorada, which would welcome us that night, we checked into the hotel. We immediately set out to discover it.
A reality that we should be aware of in that marginal but still capitalist context of the USA, surprised us.
No matter how hard we tried, access to the imminent coastline was monopolized by private properties, vacation homes, hotels, resorts and the like.
Security controls the entrance to one of the many private waterfront resorts.
From time to time, there appeared the end of a cross street that allowed the view of the ocean, in uncharacteristic patches, little or not at all attractive.
Just 10km to the southwest, we came across a public beach, a patch of sand dotted with mangroves that the receding low tide revealed, as revealed by the immense surface bed ahead.
Anne’s Beach was more suitable for amphibious Caribbean tours than for bathing.
Anne's Beach car park, south of Islamorada
We abandoned it in search of alternatives. In Lower Matecumbe Key, we found “Robbies”, a new surreal corner of the Keys, a bar-terrace complex, equipped with fishing and souvenir shops with an extension to a new boat dock.
Part of its walkways bordered ponds full of large fish.
Visitors bought buckets of bait and entertained themselves by feeding them. As expected, Caribbean pelicans have become regular customers there.
Pelicans dominate a Matecumbe Key pier bridge
When we got there, they were patrolling the walkways.
They stole pieces of fish and fought over them loudly, to the entertainment of the families who were having lunch there or preparing to set sail for their sacred fishing afternoons.
Seven Mile Bridge and a few more Miles to Key West
From Islamorada south, we travel literally over the Caribbean Sea with “jumps” and investigative stops at other intriguing fillies. We went through Vaca Key and Boot Key.
Shortly after, we entered the Seven Mile Bridge, the longest in the Florida Keys, at 11.2 km.
It maintains the parallel company of the original bridge, much tighter, still considered a world engineering marvel when it was completed in 1916.
The work was mainly due to the obsession of Henry Flagler, an oil magnate who bet on taking his Florida East Coast Railway de Miami, over the sea, to Key West.
Flagler spent $30 million of his own money on what was called “Flagler’s Madness.”
In September 1935, the most powerful cyclone to hit the USA devastated much of the structure.
Overseas Highway Perspective from Pigeon Key
Pigeon Key: A Legacy of Henry Flagler's Determination
We advance to Pigeon Key, an islet and former camp where, between 1908 and 1912, around 400 of the thousands of workers hired by Flagler lived for 1.5 dollars a day.
There we learned about many other curiosities and adventures, protected from another sudden surge of water in the old museum buildings.
From Pigeon Key, we proceed to Bahia Honda Key and Bahia Honda State Park. There, finally, the Florida Keys reveal a little of its bathing facet: white coral sands, coconut trees standing out above a mangrove forest, but not only that.
Bather strolls along the coast of Bahia Honda State Park.
Ibys roamed the beach in search of food, even among bathers who sometimes soaked up the winter sun and sometimes enjoyed themselves in the shallow water.
The old Seven Mile Bridge also passed by. First lost among the coconut trees. Then, extended along the sea in all its geometric eccentricity of concrete and steel.
The sun falls over the horizon. It transforms the bridge and the beach into an unusual silhouette, in a lacy background that receives the first silver painting, however gilded, from that noble late afternoon.
Moments before sunset on a beach in the Bahia Honda National Park, with the old railway line in the background.
Pedestrians on Henry Flagler's old Florida East Coast Railway road structure at Bahia Honda State Park
It's already dark when we enter Key West, the southernmost city in the continental US and the inhabited point of the most advanced Yankee nation in the Florida Keys.
In the image of the Alaska, Key West gained a reputation for being a bit crazy. As some residents proudly theorize “it's as if they had shaken the USA and all the crazy people fell to the bottom.”
A Key West, we will dedicate an article as separate as the city.
HOW TO GO:
Book and fly with TAP Air Portugal – TAP operates daily flights from Lisbon to Miami.
