One of the main things the Florida Keys are famous for is big game fishing. But where you have big fish you also generally have little fish, and I had read before my trip to Key Largo that the John Pennekamp state park features America’s only living coral reef. Naturally, I was excited to snorkel.
Like most airbnbs I have experienced, ours featured pretty much everything we could want, including snorkel gear. In fact, like most airbnbs I have experienced, it was decked out nicer than my own home. Especially the kitchen. How come everyone’s rental property fridges are better than mine?
The snorkel gear, however, featured only one set of goggles. I slung them into our beach bag as we left for the beach, and I asked my daughter what she was going to do while I snorkeled. She laughed dismissively. We both knew who would end up trying out the gear first.
We got to the John Pennekamp State Park in eleven minutes. Everywhere on the Keys is eleven minutes away, and you don’t really need Siri because it’s all just one long road down the narrow strips of land, with tiny side roads. So you drive from your tiny side road onto the long straight road and then you drive eleven minutes north or eleven minutes south and then you are there. I still use Siri.
The park entrance was a tropical delight, mysterious and overgrown. I half expected a T-Rex to come charging out of the trees. There was an entrance fee, but we felt it would be worth it to snorkel on a live coral reef. The beach was pretty tiny and not crowded at all. Why was it not crowded on America’s only live coral reef beach?
We set out our towels down one end, between two peculiar-looking cannons, which turned out to be Art. The sand was really hard, think concrete, and within ten seconds of lying down I had been bitten numerous times by some tiny vicious bugs that looked like swarmy sorts of ants. Big welts started to rise up on my arms and hands. Time to snorkel!
We waded into the balmy water, and Jessie applied the snorkel gear. I told her how stupid she looked and floated on my back while she launched into her hunt for stupendously colored fish. A minute after her launch, I could hear her snorkelly voice coming up through the breathing tube. Mom. There’s no fish. Just stones.
I turned over and peered into the clear water. Stones. I saw a flash of bright yellow, but it was a leaf. Chuckling quietly to myself I floated some more, while Jessie gave up on the snorkeling and went to put the gear back on the concrete beside our towels and the swarmy ants. I thought perhaps we had a couple of clues as to why the beach was so empty. But the water was fantastic and I was in the tropics and really, what were a few nasty welts when there was also the promise of mojitos in the late afternoon?
After our swim, I lay on my towel and listened to the ebb and flow of other humans on the beach. Americans on the beach tend to spend most of the time arranging their stuff, and very little time actually enjoying beach activities, such as lying motionless on the sand or floating in the water. A large family came and plunked all their stuff down ten feet from the cannon to my right. They spend a half hour unpacking their gear and putting it all on. Eventually some of them had enough gear on to wade out into the water looking for tropical fish. I silently wished them good luck. After a few minutes, I could hear their snorkelly voices calling out how there really weren’t any fish.
But then I sort of zoned out for a while and when I next looked up, they were all out out by a distant buoy, swimming around it in a tightly packed school of humans. It looked like they were seeing some action. Turns out the buoy marked a fake wreck that had been placed near the start of the reef to give a fake home to all the tropical fish. Even though this smacked a little of a gated condo community, I couldn’t help feeling we just hadn’t persevered enough in our snorkeling endeavors.
But by then it was perilously close to mojito hour so we packed up and drove the eleven minutes south to our airbnb, from which we could walk to Snappers, a tiki bar and restaurant on the water. Having a tiki bar within walking distance of your accommodations really is a genious move. As our hostess had written in her welcome note: “Snappers: walk there, stagger home.” I had already sampled their Key Lime Coladas, dessert in a glass. Their mojitos were just as spectacular.
Sadly, my daughter is nine months shy of legal drinking age, so only one of us could order a cocktail. Being Irish, however, we have found a strategy to address this shockingly unfair situation. I order an alcoholic beverage and she demurely orders a juice that is the same color as my cocktail. She quickly drinks most of the juice and I tip half my beverage into her glass. That way, we both get a little buzz going and nobody needs to lose their liquor license. I look like a lush who guzzles cocktails in half the time of normal humans, but it’s a small price to pay.
After our ten dollar mojito and some food, we decided it would be much cheaper and safer to drop by a liquor store and stock up on our own at-home mojito making kit. The airbnb fridge had tons of ice cubes waiting patiently in its pristine freezer section, but I hadn’t noticed any limes, rum, or mint.
However, even half a mojito was enough to send us into an early evening stupor, and when we came to it just seemed like too much trouble to have to drive eleven minutes to a liquor store and another eleven minutes to get limes and mint.
Tomorrow we are venturing south to Key West, the southernmost point in the continental US and birthplace of key lime pie. I think some writer guy used to live there too. The internet boasts of world class snorkeling on America’s only living coral reef. Maybe they’ll even have some fish. If not, we can always console ourselves with half a cocktail.
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