Florida

Perhaps you remember that rather silly saying about a man “having to do what a man has to do…” Well here I am back in Key West about one year after we last crossed the border from Texas to Mexico. Then it was aboard GANNET2 and now it was me alone aboard a LATAM airliner from Lima to Miami. 

Six years ago, a long time ago in a very different place…I discovered I could renew my license online so instead of driving six miles to the DMV office in Big Pine Key I amused myself by doing just that. Oh foolish move!

There is a rule in Florida that you can’t renew twice in a row online. Oops. So I bought a thousand dollars worth of airline tickets from Arequipa to Lima and then Lima to Miami where I picked up a rental car and spent the night in a hotel. What had taken a year to drive going south took a day to fly back from Peru going north and of culture shock yes indeed there was a little…

Layne as always made it easy for me physically organizing the tickets and reservations so it all went smoothly enough but suddenly I was plucked out of the world of distant self reliant overlanding and instantly found myself at home in the familiar, a rainy season hot and humid night in Miami, with a quiet comfortable room, reliable electricity and a toilet that flushed perfectly. I sat on the bed and pondered how lucky I am to be able to switch my life so easily and smoothly. Passing through immigration was cheerful, a pleasant conversation between ex-dispatcher and immigration agent and here I am free in the US to wander at will, a place where thousands aspire to and few get to pass into and here I am at home. 

I slept badly of course, upended by my sudden change in circumstances and worried about managing my status as a Florida based nomad. For I had just discovered my plan to stop off in Big Pine Key to renew my license and van registration had sprung a leak. I had checked the tax collectors website on Saturday for some reason and this was the message I found online:

Well isn’t that peachy? Now what? I am technically a resident of Clay County far from Key West.  So began a search for a county that serves any Florida resident…to save me driving the length of the state to renew my documents where my mailing service is located just outside Jacksonville, nearly in Georgia. I found an office two hours north of Miami that proudly serves all Florida residents.

I got up at five and arrived at 8:30 and in an hour with a little wait I was done. I have to say the service I got in Indiantown reminded me of the old fashioned small town friendliness I used to get in the Florida Keys and there was a bit of sadness at how much things have changed, that this is the Florida I remember fondly found here and not where I remember it. They were lovely to deal with in the office and I was glad I found them. 

My business done, GANNET2 with a new two year registration and me with a new eight year license renewed with no difficulty at all, I turned south by way of Lake Okeechobee and Belle Glade and the quiet back roads through sugar cane country. 

The lake was full after a wet summer and I paused to remind myself of our early attempts at van life sleeping wild here in the van, learning how to live on the road in Florida’s back country. 

I got back to Miami around noon and stopped at our storage locker to deposit a bunch of fridge magnets and souvenirs we have collected. The idea was to make room in the van for a fresh collection as we travel through new countries. 

Layne has a desire  that when eventually we settle down we will have a few things to decorate a stationary life so we keep a small inexpensive air conditioned locker near the Miami airport. All was well there so I checked that inspection off the list. Oh and I had my other list:  a shopping list. 

I hate shopping at Trader Joe’s without Layne as I can’t figure where anything is but I felt a huge obligation to get her what she wanted for the kitchen in our mobile home so I struggled mightily and got it done hunting like a crazed shopper among the suave middle class crowds drifting aimlessly down the aisles, those lucky local residents who are used to having Trader Joe’s at their beck and call and don’t have to shop at PlazaVea in Arequipa or Super Maxi in Ecuador. 

It was all struggle as I adapted to orderly lines of cars and drivers obeying traffic lights and no roadside trash and no horns and no darting between opposing lines of cars. Easy peasy. 

And then it was Card Sound Road like I had never been gone. 

The familiar, the routine, the Overseas Highway like I remembered it mostly. 

But there were unwelcome signs of the Keys’ status as overly desirable and not terribly welcoming. 

This used to be a place you could escape to from Dade county urban strife and come and fish for cheap entertainment but not anymore. I guess there’s no money in it for anyone in Monroe County so the people in charge have tried to make it impossible to park for free and drop a line in the water.

There are still some rebels exercising their god given Florida right to fish…but laid back is now the Indiantown way not the Keys way in my mind. 

It was an easy September drive up the island chain and I was in no hurry so when I got stuck following cars that found 60mph too much for them I just sat behind them at a fixed 45 mph rejoicing in the pleasures of being retired with nowhere to be, a status I enjoy every day on the road.

Fred continues to flourish on the old Seven Mile Bridge, in my absence. I’m slightly surprised the tree hasn’t been cut down as it makes no one any money and it’s probably a hazard to traffic as people slow down to look at it.  

And then it was back to the prohibition signs of the Florida Keys. I had long since planned to stop in Pine Channel Park in Big Pine Key for a swim. We used to swim here when it was just a hole in the rock before it was developed and sign posted. 

It’s a nice park and I’d like to think GANNET2 is unobtrusive enough we could spend a couple of hours here swimming if we ever dare visit the Keys in future in our RV.  

There were a few people at the picnic tables but I had the huge salt water pool to myself. And the seawater is bath tub warm so not as refreshing as it might have been, but we don’t have any swimming in our immediate future as we set out to drive frigid Patagonia next month.  

I took advantage. 

Nice facilities here with a beach type freshwater shower and flushing toilets. 

And then Key West and a short walk on Duval Street before I landed with much gratitude at a place to stay for the next couple of nights. 

How you pay the Duval Street rent selling jerky I can’t imagine. 

I’m sorry I am missing live theater season, my favorite outing when we lived here. 

I still don’t think a spa is a suitable substitute for the bar at the top. I get a bit stuck in the past sometimes. 

There are still young people making a go of living in Key West for a part of their lives. A youthful adventure as they think of it. 

Chuck and Wayne have a brilliant room in the back I can stay in. We went to Oasis on White Street for dinner. 

Just like Peru we had boxes to go. I enjoyed the Key West stories from these two who have made a life for themselves in a town where making it work requires more grit and diplomacy and adaptability than I possess. 

I felt like I had never left. 

Hostal Las Mercedes

Tuesday I fly to Florida and escape Peru for a few days, though this interruption to renew my drivers license feels more like an annoyance than a benefit. 

Layne’s leg is healing well and every other day she meets the surgeon in the horribly overcrowded public hospital here in Arequipa and he checks progress. She is allowed one short walk a day as the skin cancer site slowly heals.  I hope that a few days after my return on Sunday we will be allowed to get on the road again toward Chile. I’m done with Peru. 

Our campground at Hostal Las Mercedes is splendid, a fifteen minute amble from the Plaza de Armas in the heart of Arequipa, and most important of all Rusty likes living here, the sole dog on the premises most of the time. 

There are two Perus contained within this country and we, the lucky ones, skim the surface and leave. The poor unfortunates who live here and cannot leave have to make the best of a state as recutting on the brink of failure. If you ever chose to visit Peru and there is a lot to see be it mountainous countryside unlike any other, or miles of spectacular  undeveloped dramatic desert oceanfront, or ruins so old and so complex and so numerous they make your head spin, you will come in an organized tour or as part of some limited view of the country that need not expose you to the realities of this filthy run down society. I’d recommend visiting Peru that way. 

Layne thinks me too sensitive to poverty and the atmosphere of despair that permeates Peruvian society and she’s probably right. The temptation is to take the lack of manners, the surliness and absence of warmth personally but we’ve didn’t weeks watching people here treat each other just as badly. This morning Layne said “Buenas Dias!”brightly to an old man shuffling by on the sidewalk as we waited for our Uber to the hospital. He didn’t break step but glared up at her with a look that was either questioning her sanity or wondering what terrible thing she wanted from him. He shuffled past, paused, turned around to stare one more time and then carried on. “Teach you,” I said to Layne the irrepressible Pollyanna. 

I’m still reading Mario Vargas Llosa’s autobiography “A Fish In Water” and the more he expounds on the hopelessness of Peruvian society the more I understand why he lives in Madrid. At first I thought it had to go either him losing the 1990 presidential election but I think his aggravation with more goes much deeper. In an effort to call the Novel winner to back me up let me post an excerpt from two pages of the book:

“The profound pessimism…” That phrase used to describe “Peru’s sickness” gave me permission to write this post. And I know the privilege of  travel especially in the era of social media and pursuit of likes one is not permitted to be anything but gloriously in love with every country, every strange custom and every inexplicable way of doing things. I have found the pessimism of Peru, the morose inhabitants, the national depression and lack of hope for a better future to have worn me down. My fellow overlanders speak no dis ish, read no literature and seem to take everything at face value. They never be too. To garbage piled by the side of the road or the utter indifference to good manners and the lack of warmth among Peruvians. They read to me like travel agencies. 

The thing that gets me is that we the overlanders are here today and gone tomorrow, we have no stake in the future of Peru. My sadness at their plight leaves me suspended in a web of my own making, an outsider from all sides.  Peruvians know they are stuck except the ones who escape. And escape they do. 

We have talked to quite a few middle class Peruvians whose children study abroad and settle down abroad and make lives for themselves far from Peru. The latest we met are the owners of the hostel and campground where we are staying. 

Their grown up children live in Spain and the Netherlands And they too are going to live in Europe to join them. 

A week ago I was out walking the grounds with Rusty shortly after dawn. He wants me to go with him as he checks the perimeter and sniffs the plants and eats a few blades of grass. The staff here have expressed Shazam’s t his quiet he is, nd er barking and never bothering anyone. 

He bothers me first thing in the morning demanding my attention. 

While I was watching him Gilberto the night watchman came by on his way home and we got to talking. He told me that after ten years of trying the family who own this place have sold it to a hotel conglomerate in Arequipa. The future looks set to change for this slow paced old world hotel and campground, the only one of its kind in Arequipa. 

Gilberto has worked her for a decade. He used to be a stonemason and the builders’ yard next door also owned by the family. They owned a huge strip of land along the river he said. They hired him to work at the hotel. 

No one knows what will happen next. The new owners who are supposed to sign the papers this week have promised no changes before December and in Latin America deadlines frequently get pushed back. We will be long gone before change arrives at Las Mercedes. 

For Gilberto it’s a time of uncertainty.  Is he worried for his job? I asked which is always the preoccupation in the US. He shrugged saying he can sheath fine work. No, he said, this place is like home. He pointed out the stonework he has built and repaired over the years including the campground bathhouse and retaining walls paths and steps. He likes working with stone. 

He also has scoop at the hotel where he can leave his tools and other possessions. He has a daytime job house painting and having a room at the hostel saves him from having to keep his tools at home because he lives far out in the suburbs and commuting all the time would be expensive. 

This place has given him a good life and it’s all going to change it seems like. He says he’ll miss seeing his work and feeling at home on the job but he has a philosophical streak as I suppose you must when you are born a powerless Peruvian. Life is change he shrugs before going to his day job. 

Peru is out eleventh country on this journey and one can’t help but compare and contrast as the road unfurls. Talking about Peru Layne and I both agree that Peru is in bottom place with Belize. 

The seventy sndcghe excellent food don’t make up for the sense of indifference and sourness of the people. Colombians have come out of a civil war every bit as brutal as Peru’s struggle with the Shining Path guerrillas but Colombians among themselves and in contacts with us exude a joy at being alive that is totally absent here. 

Even Nicaraguans who, privately will tell you how aggravating the dictatorship is, greet each other discus strangers with good manners and even good cheer. Ecuador are reserved but are quick to smile back and ask how you’re doing if you make the effort. 

I hope Peru finds a happier way forward, further sake not for ours. I’ve checked out already and am bracing for high prices and reserved populations among the Chileans to the south of here. 

Unlike Bolivia and Belize, countries you can drive around, there is no escaping Peru for the north-south road traveler. This vast country fills the land from the Pacific Coast to the impenetrable Amazon jungle so even a grump like me has to come to terms with his revulsion. 

Florida presents its own problems for a nomad like me. I have discovered many driver license centers only serve county residents, including Monroe county so to renew my license I will have to drive north, I hope not as far as Jacksonville which is near where my official address is but Florida used to be easy for paperwork and is becoming less so. The license itself lasts eight years now so it may well outlive its usefulness as I will be scheduled to be 75 when it expires. 

In the age of suspicion and conformity that we live through having a post box for an address is barely acceptable anymore which is ironic as living a nomad life is technically easier than ever with electronics and miniaturization. 

I find myself marginalizing myself from the 21st century and I have to admit I d joy the sensation of living at the edges. Forty years ago I emigrated to California because I wanted to see and live the tend setter up close. Then we sailed to the little island on the outskirts of Florida and made a life there. 

Nowadays I enjoy not belonging, not settling, not having to make a choice. 

In a way that reminds me of my feelings of sadness for Peru I feel the love and let live of my youth that I try to replicate in old age takes more effort than it should.  

Simplify! The trend setters urge us. 

Better not because of you do simplify your life you won’t have an address, a place, a fixed center to your life. And that annoys people. 

And yet there I have all I need which is more than many people have. In Peru it is a fortune, in the US it is theater established order and I dangle between the two.

Rolling Steel Tent

If you would like to read a page about van life in the US. 

https://rollingsteeltent.blogspot.com/

A single white man eleven years in a van driving around at random it appears in a Chevy Express. No dog, no standing headroom and not many photos. 

Just thought I’d mention it in case you are sick of South America or need variety. 

Cheers. 

L’Chaim

Rusty took his walk with his happy old man and we got barked at in our joy together. Rusty pulled through despite the barking frenzy that greeted his approach. It was a lovely cool crisp morning and I wanted to walk, the doctor had setlledcmynkersisyentvcough and breathlessness so at lady I was feeling good. I like these mornings together, him on his leash and me following with no goal or aim except to make him happy. Arequipa is asleep before seven in the morning and we had the streets to ourselves. 

It’s a bit hard to imagine I’ll be in Florida next Wednesday. Talking with our German neighbors over dinner Brita said she doesn’t like breaking up a trip by going home as it can leave her confused. I tended to agree but I have no choice to get my license renewed. 

Marcel grilled burgers for the hour of us for dinner; hamburgers cooked by a man from Hamburg, that’s a first, and we talked about the differences between modern Germany and the US. They are another young couple who see their home country sliding into industrial obsolescence and are looking to emigrate when their trip is done. 

I got my blood test results and to my surprise the changes  I’ve made since my last test two years ago have paid off.  No diabetes, normal cholesterol and internal organs operating as required. Layne takes good care of me and this heart stuff isn’t worrying the cardiologist. So I guess we just keep going. I never expected to live this long so every day really is a conscious gift. And even here Halloween, my birthday, is celebrated US style. I never expected that. 

Dollar City is where you go if you need a few odds and ends to sort out the loose end in your life. Cleaners, decorations, bungee cords, tools, baskets and bins… you name it they have it. I waited outside and read my book. 

I still like Arequipa as much as I am ready to get driving. I hope Laynes leg sound will be healed enough to get us going to Chile when I get back. 

Our dinner hosts Marcel and Brita who have traveled quite in their lives. They know South America from previous back packing trips and this time they bought their van from another German couple who brought it here from Europe. Their plan is to return to Chile and sell it there nearly next year and then fly to New Zealand for more travels. They are engineers in real life and quit their lives to takeoff before they get too old to think about settling in a new country possibly. He likes Gebtkeman ZJavk bourbon and now so do I even though I had just a taste. 

They are waiting for brake pads to ship from Germany and I’m hoping they’ll be here while I’m gone to keep Layne company. Arequipa is coming through for us.