Florida Trail: Overseas Heritage Trail Day 5
January 10, 2022
Mile: 69.6 to 82.6 (13.0 miles)
Start: Lime Tree Bay Resort, Layton, FL
Finish: Kon Tiki Resort, Islamorada, FL
- Animals seen today: pelicans, tarpon, sea turtles, iguanas, chickens, nurse sharks, barracuda, reef fish
- Keys crossed today: Long, Fiesta, Craig, Lower Matecumbe, Upper Matecumbe Key
We woke up around 6am in order to hike a half marathon in the morning so we could make a snorkeling tour we booked to go out to a nearby reef this afternoon at 3pm. Our day was going to be just like a gorgeous 1980s mullet – business up front, party in the back – and we were all jazzed up to get going. The wind was still pretty significant this morning so we weren’t too sure if the snorkel tour was still on or not but we decided to keep hiking anyway and if they canceled it, oh well. We grabbed a quick breakfast buffet at the hotel before all the grubby tourists came and touched everything with their Covid hands. Down here in Florida it seems like Covid doesn’t exist unless you wanted it to exist or you’re dying of it. The reality is people are more concerned with how the fishing is, what type of tiki bar they’re hitting up at 5 o’clock or what type of mixed drink with a fancy umbrella in it they’re going to have in the evening. We don’t really see a ton of people out hiking on the side of the highway so we’re not terribly worried about it being vaxxed and boosted but we still wear our masks and hand sanitize.
We took off down the trail leaving behind another Florida key and crossing into a few small ones through Islamorada aka the village of islands or something like that. I thought “Isla Morada” was Spanish for “purple island” but who knows. It’s a very long island and we walked on it for most of the day next to the fast-moving cars either on bike paths or on the road facing oncoming traffic. While walking we had a good chuckle because very mile or so pulled over on the side of the highway were police cars but on closer inspection there was nobody in them. However the people speeding by at 70mph don’t know that and they start panicking, slowing down immediately as soon as they see the cars. When you start looking a little closer at the empty cop cars we noticed that they have longer grass growing underneath them. At first we thought maybe due to budget cuts or lack of police personnel that the local sheriffs just throw these empty police cars on the side of the highway to trick people into slowing down. But after seeing how many people the police pull over on the only highway in and out of the Keys, I think they do quite the business on out-of-towner speeding tickets and probably had extra budget to buy a couple of decoy cars. Well it seems like the strategy works because it seems like everyone who sees the empty cop cars pumps the brakes as they’re having a mini meltdown realizing they’re going 20 over the speed limit.
We passed by stacks of spiny lobster traps under the shade of the peeling red limbs of the gumbo-limbo trees next to the lapping waves on the fossilized coral shores. As we strolled across the pedestrian bridges, we scared up a ton of enterprising wild birds meticulously eyeing the fisherman’s catches to see if they could snatch up any scraps when their backs were turned. Yesterday we saw a couple of young guys pull up in an enormous pompano which is a giant torpedo-shaped fish, kind of like a tuna, that must have weighed 20 or 30 pounds! I mean it was a solid mass of muscle and the teenage fishermen were super stoked to have hauled it up 60 feet to the bridge without losing the massive fish. There were only tiny fish and masses of tangled seaweed being hauled up from the ocean bridges today but it was still cool to see all the people trying their luck fishing.
The morning was a pretty uneventful hike until we arrived at the infamous Robbie’s Marina. I had heard about this place while researching random stuff to do in Florida and was super excited to see it. It’s definitely one of those strange roadside attractions that you only see on the side of the highway in America but it was only a stone’s throw from the Florida Trail so we had to stop. The whole Marina started from when a good samaritan named Robbie encountered a massive injured tarpon floundering in shallow water. When Robbie tried to guide the tarpon fish into deeper water, he noticed its jaw was torn open. He called his friend Old Doc Roach who sewed up the injured tarpon with twine and a mattress needle then placed him in a bait tank where they hand-fed the massive fish for 6 months until he came back to good health. When they released “Old Scarface” back to the ocean, he ended up coming back to Robbie’s dock to visit and even brought with him some of his tarpon friends. Today you can feed the schools of tarpon at Robbie’s Marina and it’s become an enterprising tourist attraction to the max complete with tiki bars, restaurants, gift shops and of course, tarpon feeding.
Tarpon are these absolutely enormous silver fish that can grow upwards of 300lb and be as long as 8 feet head-to-tail. Shannon’s Aunt who is a Fisherman Hall of Famer named “Bobber Anne” hauled up a 135 lb tarpon in Costa Rica and the photo of that fish looked like it could swallow her whole! I couldn’t wait to feed the beautiful giant tarpon that drifted listlessly under the docks waiting to be fed delicious fishies by the tourists who come day in and day out. We paid our $4.50 to grab a bucket of bait fish and headed out to the maze of docks, nets and pelicans. I’m not going to lie – feeding the tarpon was awesome! These fish are some of the most acrobatic fish out there and are known to jump huge distances out of the water. They look like shiny silver torpedoes and when we saw the fish up close at Robbie’s Marina, I’d say at least half of them were longer than I am tall! I was hoping that with our big hiking backpacks on that we would be able to balance on dry dock and not fall into the ocean where we might get snatched up by one of these aquatic beasties. To get eaten by tarpon would certainly be an unusual way to die and definitely make the papers but we still had a lot of the Florida Trail left and I wasn’t ready to go out just yet!
Hauling around our plastic buckets of small fish, we quickly learned the technique of dodging past the gatekeeper pelicans who patrolled the docks and waters by the dozens. These pelicans were something else I tell you what! If you didn’t constantly watch yourself, those mean pelicans wouldn’t hesitate to bite you. Their enormous beaks were like 12-inch-long vices and we saw them snap at our legs, our shirts and our hands trying to get at those fish in the bucket meant for the tarpon below. The pelicans had certainly been around a long time becoming experts at knowing the ins and outs of when people actually had fish in their bucket versus when they just had an empty bucket. They weren’t dummies!
Shannon and I attempted to drop a few fish into the water where the hordes of pelicans quickly seized the bait before they even hit the water. Werealized that the pelicans would snap up all of our fish if we weren’t cunning or quick enough to outwit the hip high birds. Our problems were solved when we saw another guy scaring the pelicans off by straight up kicking them in the head which turned out to be Shannon’s favorite thing about the whole sideshow circus that was Robbie’s Marina. He started running up and down the dock with his big pack bouncing on his back, kicking pelican after pelican and clanging our buckets together to scare the dinosaur birds away from people! He was having a blast and I couldn’t stop laughing. The pelicans weren’t harmed because they flew away before you could make contact with their feathery bodies.
We found out the secret to feeding the giant tarpon was to sneak our fish into the netted area set up over the water so the pelicans couldn’t touch the baitfish as the nets were in the way. The silvery 6-foot-long tarpon below snarfed up the fish like they were a smoothie or something – they were so quick! It was amazing to see the friends and descendants of ole Scarface swimming lazily around slurping down baitfish. They are living the life – no wonder they hang out at Robbie’s Marina!
At one point a pelican bit down on the tip of my shoes as I tried to kick it away and now I’m walking around with pelican drool and half-digested fish guts on the outside of my shoe. Gross. I guess it’s good it’s supposedly a long way until we start encountering Florida’s black bear population because my shoes definitely smelled funky with all that fish guts smeared on them. I don’t think the smell is going to get any better as we hiked all day in the hot sun. As we were leaving Robbie’s, we saw a larger gentleman being attended to by his family. It looked like he hadn’t been quick enough to watch his fingers around the pelicans while handling the fish that you feed the tarpon. He had a bandanna wrapped around his wrist that looked very swollen and bruised. He was talking to someone about how the pelicans bit him. I raised my eyebrows at Shannon and we were just happy that we only were bitten on the foot. When I was a little kid, I was on a nature tour in Australia and our guide was bitten by a pelican that nearly broke his arm. Like all things down there, the Australian pelican was bigger and meaner than normal pelicans. I found out later they have the biggest beaks of any bird in the world. The Aussie pelicans were probably twice the size of Robbie’s Marina’s pelicans and I still remember the cries and screams of our nature guide after the Aussie pelican snapped down on his arm. Not fun! Hopefully this guy at Robbie’s would be okay.
Meanwhile, we decided that Shannon‘s new trail name is going to be “Pelican Kicker” as we continued on the highway laughing at how he taught other tourists how to properly kick the pelicans without getting bitten. The trail crossed in front of the richy rich neighborhoods with beautiful multimillion dollar oceanfront mansions. Coconuts were ripening on the palm trees, the sea breeze was perfect and the sun was out warming us up just enough. What more could you ask for?
Soon the terrain went from residential regal to real wild where we tightly hugged the ocean and mangroves following the highway with not much space to go anywhere. The oceanside was maybe 40 feet from you on the right and the bayside was 20 feet from you on the left. We noticed a lack of fishermen which was unusual because everywhere along the coastline we’d seen them tucked in the beaches fishing wherever they could. It wasn’t until we started seeing the signs posted along the highway that we understood why nobody was fishing here. “Warning: American Crocodile Habitat!” Yep – there are freaking saltwater crocs hanging out in the mangroves down here. When you think you’ve seen all the things that can kill you in Florida, the state just throws something ridiculous like saltwater crocodiles at you.
We’ve decided that pretty much everything can kill you in Florida so it’s starting to be not so surprising anymore when you find out there’s crazy shit like crocodiles or burning acid trees or hiker-stalking panthers. You just accept that it’s the rule instead of the exception that everything in Florida wants to poison, eat or kill you. Once you’ve accepted that fact, Florida is actually kind of enjoyable for being as weird and eclectic as it is!
We spent the early afternoon keeping an eye out for American crocodiles which are apparently endangered but that there’s enough of a population here for the Florida Wildlife Commission to post signs. Sadly we didn’t see any crocodiles but maybe they saw us without us realizing.
13 miles into our day we hit the Kon Tiki Resort where we were staying for the night. The girl at the desk was super sweet, down to earth and a little sassy. She was going to put us in one of the cheaper rooms but straight up told us that her guests this past weekend we’re hot messes and a drunk guest punched a hole in the wall in one room and another couple ripped down the shower head in a fit of bathroom passion. Nasty! She moved us to a larger room with a full kitchen where we threw down our stuff, changed and around 1:30 walked down the street to find a quick bite to eat for lunch that wouldn’t make us puke on the snorkel tour boat as we’re out in the ocean in high surf. I’m not going to lie, it was very hard to move off the hotel room couch but we got our act together after having hiked a half marathon and headed out to a small grocery store. Here we picked out a couple salads, some iced tea and chowed down in the shade sitting on a wooden telephone pole in a parking lot of a marina. Dessert was a couple Dramamines taken about 45 minutes before we headed out to the ocean so they had time to start working in case the seas were rough.
We hiked on to a fancy resort a mile from our hotel where we were meeting for our snorkel tour. The rooms at this resort started at only a measly $500/night to stay in what looked like nothing more than a Motel 6 with an artificial beach. It was interesting and I’m not quite sure what the $500 a night gets you but peeking in some of the rooms that the housekeepers were cleaning it seemed like kind of a ripoff. Anyways, the security guard (who appeared to be super high) told us where to go for a snorkel tour and after checking in, we hung out in beach chairs on the fancypants beach with our bug bitten legs, sneakers and some shmexy Crocs next to people who were clearly paying to stay at the resort. They were arguing and fighting loudly and we figured that they were probably going to get a divorce when they went home. Hey, money can’t buy happiness. Maybe they were arguing about who gets to sit next to the smelly mosquito-bitten hiker trash. I don’t blame them for fighting about that.
We jumped onto the pontoon boat for the snorkel tour where despite their apparently strict Covid protocols they emailed us about, they crammed as many people as they could into the boat. We were squished sitting side-by-side next to strangers on a boat heading out into 2-3 foot seas. Once we were out a couple miles, we jumped off the boat next to a shelf reef called Alligator Reef named for the sinking of the USS Alligator on the shallow coral years ago. When we later found ourselves admiring a map of the local shipwrecks near Alligator Reef where the water is only 3 or 4 feet deep we discovered of the other local shipwrecks in the area that a drug running boat named “Cannabis Cruiser” had also sunk nearby. Maybe that’s why there’s a restaurant nearby called “The Square Grouper” a.k.a. what happens when unsuspecting fishermen accidentally hook a bale of cocaine or weed tossed overboard by drug runners.The Florida Keys are a wild place and no wonder there’s so much of a military presence and crazy radar technology there. In addition to drug running boats, we’d just seen on the news that a boat full of 100 Cuban migrants had landed on Key Largo where local and federal law enforcement had their hands full dealing with that.
An enormous towering steel beam lighthouse rose from the shallow Alligator Reef, marking the hazardous rocks and hull-smashing shoals. In the shimmering teal ocean, colorful golden-and-black butterfly fish and yellowtail snapper drifted idly in the clear waters. Beams of sunlight shone down on the coral as waves crested over us.
Large dark black barracuda with their wickedly curved fangs eyed us as they patrolled the reef bottom, parting the schools of tiny reef fish and scattering them to the waves. A couple of nurse sharks wiggled their way along the seafloor, hiding under coral shelves in the dark as they waited for the sun to set to start hunting. They didn’t seem to care much for all of the snorkelers and either swam away or hid from us. The reef was 15 or 20 feet below us which, for someone who was out of practice freediving like I am, was a little hard to reach without equalizing your eardrums and sinus cavities. It was fun trying to dive close to the reef and when we saw a guy who was really good at it, we asked him for tips.
We saw a couple of sea turtles swimming across the coral reef which was awesome. They weren’t nearly as big as the massive loggerhead we spotted from the bridge the other day but were still impressive in the sparkling afternoon sunlight. What I was most concerned about was the enormous barracuda checking out the snorkelers and I had made sure to take off all my shiny jewelry before we arrived on the boat. Shannon had a silvery reflective patch on the back of his shorts and he kept mentioning how he felt like there were always barracudas surrounding him. He started swimming with one of his hands covering the silvery spot on his butt and the curious predator fish seemed to pay him less attention. At least he made it back to the boat with both of his cheeks still intact.
We met a couple named Joe and Whitney from Washington who were pretty cool. Joe had learned how to equalize the pressure in his sinuses after his eardrum ruptured after swimming too deep in Hawaii. They were both pretty strong swimmers so they were able to dive down to the bottom and see the reef life up close. Whitney saw neon purple nudibranches which are little electric sea slugs which are pretty cool.
I dove down 15 feet or so until the pressure in my ears felt too much. It was cool to be able to see the bunches of reef fish up close. Big toothed parrotfish chewed up mouthfuls of coral and pooped out sand. Purple sea fans waved in the currents amongst the orange delicate fire coral and there was so much to see that was so cool. I think next time I’ll take Joe and Whitney‘s advice and equalize things out at the surface so I can dive deep and see the reef up close. The inky black barracudas freaked me out a bit with their 2-inch-long teeth hanging out from his underbite. It seemed like he was just watching us and every time he swam close to the fish schools they scattered. Several other large silver and royal blue barracuda swam around us occasionally and made me think of great predators like wolves as they circled the snorkelers in their underwater packs.
We filmed some great footage and had a blast snorkeling but with being probably a little dehydrated from hiking, the 2 and 3 foot seas made me feel a little queasy so I was excited to get back to the boat and return to land. The ride back to the resort the first mate was busy with taking drink orders and handing out Rum Punches and Capri Suns. We heard some recommendations from the crew where to go eat and drink at the local dive bars. Once back on land, we found out that we could enjoy the resort amenities for free since they are offered to any of the snorkeling guests since you’re already on property. We hung out for a little and chatted up Joe and Whitney who were doing the Florida Keys vacation cleverly and on the cheap which is not easy to do.
They had come up with the absolutely brilliant idea of staying at “The Hotel Hertz.” They spent a little extra money to rent an SUV which they put the backseats down and bought a $15 air mattress at Walmart and slept comfortably in the back of their SUV. It’s a little bit tricky where you can park in the Keys since it’s so popular but they said in the 9 days that they’d been there, they only had the door knocked on once by someone asking them to move. It’s pretty awesome to only spend 50 bucks a day on housing! You can’t even tent camp for that cheap! Instead of spending all this money on hotels, they were now able to go do what they wanted and splurge a little bit on stuff like snorkel tours and renting kayaks. I was so impressed!
They offered to go with us to the dive bar that the captain recommended and we said sure why not so they moved the SUV’s seats up and we hopped in down to the Whistlestop dive bar, made famous by the TV drama Bloodline. It was so much of a dive bar that when all of the CO2 lines went down and tap beer was 86ed, nobody blinked an eye. Then the Internet stopped working. Then someone hijacked the music on their phone and this guy was walking around the bar asking everybody if they were controlling the music because it was not pump up music and kinda lame. One of the waitresses lost her phone and the bar shut off the music so everyone could help listen for her phone ringing. It was hilarious!
Finally when we were leaving the bar after dancing a little bit on an empty stomach full of sunshine and dehydration and tequila shots, we thought we’d pick up some seltzers that Shannon and I could share back at the hotel. Shannon went to go pay for the four pack and a lady who was kind of a hot mess told him that some guy across the bar was giving Shannon the middle finger. Shannon was unphased and just replied, “Okay?” Hot Mess Lady said, “I think it’s because you’re buying seltzers.” He looked at her and flatly said, “These are from my wife… why would some random guy give me the middle finger?” Hot Mess confessed that she didn’t know but she thought that the guy was just trying to start a fight and commented how nice it was for Shannon to buy his wife some seltzers. Shannon just shook his head and came up to me saying that he thought it was time for us to go. So I guess the Whistlestop gets pretty crazy. We watched some crazy dancing in the short time we were there and people falling on the floor and all sorts of stuff. Definitely a fun but crazy dive bar!
Whitney and Joe dropped us off a mile to the south at a tiny grocery store where we said goodbye and suggested that they could park for the night at the marina parking lot where we’d eaten lunch. Shannon and I wrangled up a bunch of random stuff to eat for dinner at the store picking up a sack of frozen edamame, more iced tea, gluten-free pizza and some peel-and-eat shrimp. Entertainment for the night was SpongeBob SquarePants as our dehydrated brains unwound and we chowed down on our smorgasbord while our laundry was going. Lightning outside flashed and thunder rolled, reverberating over the roof of our little shack. The rain was pouring down and the sound of the patter lulled me to sleep. Shanon had to wake me up to make sure I brushed my teeth before passing out for the night.
Tomorrow we have another 20 miles to go to Key Largo but we’ll waking up not quite as early as today because we’re pretty tired from essentially hiking a half marathon with our backpacks followed by swimming in the ocean for an hour. Nobody can tell us that we aren’t getting our exercise out here – that’s for sure!