Earlier this month, we went on vacation to the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area. Many of my readers who know me well know that I am not a fan of Florida at all. However, this was not meant to be your standard Florida vacation but rather a chance to visit family that both live in the area and that were visiting from Venezuela. Our home base if you will would be Weston. Weston is a suburb about 15 miles west of Ft. Lauderdale. It has become a very popular landing place for well-to-do Venezuelans looking to escape Hugo Chavez’ socialist style revolution. So many Venezuelans have ended up here that Weston has been nicknamed Westonzuela. Thanks to our fantastic hosts, we had a great time down here and I can say that I am now a fan of…………

……well South Florida anyway. You can keep Orlando, Mickey Mouse, Shell World, the scenes of 90% of all Cops episodes, the Florida Gators, the Miami Dolphins, and everything else which represents the touristy or tacky side of Florida. None of which by the way was experienced on this trip. Here are a few highlights.

Mountain bike riding at Markham Park – When my brother in law Paul said that we would do some mountain bike riding in Florida, I figured that the flat Florida terrain would be perfect for my out of shape self. After all, it has been a good 15 years since I have done some quality off road riding. The park has quite a wide variety of terrain and obstacles. Paul did his best to keep my father in law and me off of the expert trails, but we did end up on a couple of them. Overall, I did pretty well and only wiped out once. It brought back memories of my old BMX days and has inspired me to get my bike dusted off, tuned up and start hitting some of the local trails in Austin.

Miami Seaquarium – On Friday, we took Marcos, Mathias and Vanessa to this Sea World-ish park. This is one of those first time for Vanessa things that we just love as parents. It was such a blast watching her see all of these new creatures for the first time. We were able to catch the flipper show and the sea lion show. Vanessa enjoyed the dolphins but seemed a little freaked out by the sea lions.

Scuba diving – Paul and I decided we wanted to do a sunken ship artificial reef. After doing a bit of research online, we decided to do Hog Heaven. Rated as intermediate and both having not dived in a few years, it looked to be our best bet. It didn’t take the guys at the Coastal Marine Dive Shop long to realize that we didn’t know what the hell we were doing or were we were going. For reasons that I can’t recall, they convinced us to do the Jay Scutti Tug instead.

They were very helpful in getting us set up and explaining how to find it. Just when we finally convinced them that we weren’t complete idiots, we walked out of the shop without our tanks. Even though it was them that reminded us, I am ALMOST positive we wouldn’t have actually left without them. The strong currents made it challenging to get positioned directly over the site. On our second attempt, we decided that where we dropped the anchor was correct and that even though we seemed to drift a ways off, we could follow the anchor line down and find the site. As it turned out, we were almost dead on. Our drop was only about 20-30 feet from the site. This was my first wreck so I was easily impressed. There was lots of coral growing on the ship and plenty of fish. Neither of us felt comfortable enough to enter the ship so we just scouted it out from the outside. After the dive, we cruised around a bit on the boat to try and avoid storms both to the North and South of us and then headed back to dry land to meet the rest of the family for dinner.

Café Canela – What good is a vacation if you don’t overeat right? If you want to start your day off right then head over to Café Canela for the Desayuno Canela [black beans, white cheese, perico (scrambled eggs with veggies), carne mechada (seasoned shredded beef), and an arepa]. I would say that this is a typical Venezuelan breakfast, but most Venezuelans I know stop at the arepa. What they should call this plate is the Venezuelan breakfast for fat gringos. Between this and the chicha (Venezuelan rice and milk drink), I wasn’t hungry until about eight o’clock later that night. The chicha was so good that we almost missed our flight because we just had to have it one more time before we left.

Miami Heat/ Los Angeles Lakers game – My how the mighty have fallen. It is so hard to believe that the Miami Heat won the NBA title less than 2 years ago. All I could keep thinking is that the Heat looked an awful lot like the Washington Generals of Harlem Globetrotters fame. The Lakers gave them dozens of chances to get back into this game only for the Heat to blow these chances with good old fashioned clumsiness. I guess that is why they are worst team in the NBA right now at 10-44. American Airlines Arena is a newer arena with modern architecture and is an overall nice place to catch a game. The Bayside location is great for getting there early and staying late to get your party on. Of course, to be in the mood to party after a game, you would have to be a fan of any team playing against the Heat.

Sawgrass Mills Mall - This is the largest mall in Florida and a key destination for all North and South Americans traveling to the area looking to get their hands on reasonably priced brand name goods. I personally despise shopping so the highlight is that I actually had to spend a minimal amount of time here.

Getting destroyed at Wii Sports – The Nintendo Wii is the greatest thing to happen to video games since the joystick. In this household, Marcos is the clear cut king of all that is Wii. Wii played a lot of tennis which gave Paul a break from being the household Wii chump. All absolutely sucking aside, I found myself getting addicted to this thing. Something tells me that Vanessa may be getting a Wii in her Easter basket this year.

Last but not least, hanging out with family – I hadn’t seen Marcos and Mathias in a while so it was great to hang out with them. There is nothing like being put to shame regarding my Spanish skills by a pair of bilingual 5 year olds. Hopefully, Vanessa will continue this humiliation of her old man. Contrary to the evidence below, Vanessa also enjoyed playing with the boys.

As with Christmas in Erie, Daniella and I were left wishing that we lived closer to more of Vanessa’s cousins. Also, coordinating this trip with Daniella’s parents as well as her Aunt Maria and Uncle Roberto’s family gave us all a chance to catch up and gave them a chance to see Vanessa.

Thank you Paul, Maria-Eugenia, Marcos, and Mathias for hosting and entertaining us for the week. Next time you come to Austin we will surely return the favor.

…running into a (insert potentially dangerous animal here) and not needing to run/swim faster than said animal, but only needing to run/swim faster than the person/people that you are with?

I grew up going camping in black bear country, PA. I have been constantly disappointed in the fact that I have never seen one. So while on vacation with my family in the Smoky Mountains, I was determined to see a black bear. The signs and warnings are everywhere you turn. The tales here are many of encounters with these beautiful creatures so I knew this was my chance.

To begin my quest, I convinced everyone to take a drive through Cade’s Cove to see some wildlife. Unfortunately, we saw little more than other people in cars driving around this scenic loop. There were some great views, but as far as wildlife goes, we only saw a few deer that were as tame as those found in a petting zoo. This is one of the places that all of the tourists go which are typically the places I like to avoid. I imagine it is better if you park and hike, but we didn’t have the proper hiking gear for carrying Vanessa. Besides, seeking out bears with a 10 month old would not exactly put us in contention for the parents of the year award. So we settled for the scenic drive.

The next day we went for a nice family hike to Laurel Falls. We pretty much shelved the bear hunt for this hike as it is another high traffic tourist hike, but it was enjoyable none the less. I had a great time taking “short cuts” with my niece Kyrah. And the path was stroller friendly so Vanessa was able to enjoy a nice nap on the way back down.

Upon returning to our awesome cabin outside of Gatlinburg and having some dinner, I convinced my sisters Danielle and Andrea, and Andrea’s boyfriend Ian to take a dusk hike on one of the trails closer to the cabin. Looking at the smoky mountain trail map, I decided to go to Greenbrier Rd. to try our luck. I knew our best chance would be to go where people were not so we headed out. We drove a few miles up Greenbrier Rd. and settled on a semi grown-in trail. There were not any other cars parked here so we were off to a good start as far as staying away from people was concerned. We grabbed our cameras and a flashlight and headed out. Since it was getting dark soon and the woods in the smokies are very thick anyway, we planned to just hike for about 20 minutes and then turn back. So begins our journey.

It is a strange feeling when you want to see something your survival instinct is telling you don’t really want to see. I always get this when I scuba dive as well. Every little noise you hear and every strange thing in the distance looks or sounds like what you may be looking for and it always makes my heart skip a beat. After about 15 minutes of hiking, it was getting dark and we decided we would go for another five minutes. A few moments later I heard a little rustle in the bushes, I looked over and sure enough it was a little cub running up a tree. I pointed it out the others and we all scrambled for our cameras.

However, I knew that this was exactly the wrong scenario to see a bear. If there is a cub, there is a mama somewhere nearby. And probably 90% of the bear stories with bad endings involve a mama bear and a cub. I told the others that it would probably be best just to turn around and head back. But we wanted pictures so we fumbled around with our cameras for a few more moments when the cub turned back down the tree and bolted up the trail.

Ian and I started heading briskly back towards the car(the opening phrase of this post did not seem like a joke anymore) while my fearless 21 year old sister Andrea was set on seeing mama. She held Danielle back for just a few more moments until they heard a loud snort. We all immediately high tailed it out of there. We ran for about a minute until we calmed down and walked the rest of the way. We had done it! We saw a black bear in the wild. This alone would have made it a great vacation. I was so excited, I couldn’t sleep that night.

The rest of the week there was also great. We took Vanessa and Kyrah to the Ripley’s Aquarium downtown. I had never been to an aquarium before and was very impressed. Vanessa was so fascinated the whole time we were there. I love watching that little mind working and just taking everything in.

We also did some rafting on the Pigeon River. The river had a few cat4’s but for the most part was pretty mellow. This was fine with me as I am always just happy to be outdoors and in the water.

Our last day there, Ian and I went on a sunrise hike to Ramsay Cascades. We were the third car in the lot and only saw three other people on the way up. This is my kind of hike. It was a great workout and seeing the falls is well worth the eight mile round trip. This trail was also up Greenbrier Rd which I would recommend over Cade’s Cove to anyone who wants a less crowded and quiet day in the Smokies. It was so nice to spend some time with the family and to get back to the East Coast Mountains.