Quirky Matlacha

10pm Friday 27 February











The Sun and Moon B and B in Matlacha is an adorable spot, undoubtedly the best located accommodation I have had so far. The wildlife around here is astonishing. But the road to Pine Island is very close and it's been busy since 0530 with boat trailers and motorbikes on the move.
I'm due to go on a boat trip today, but it would have tied me up for six hours and I really want some time to explore quirky Matlacha and nearby Pine Island. Curt, my extraordinarily hospitable host, suggests that I instead head out to the Randell Research Centre which documents the history of the area and then he'll take me out in his boat to get a really local slant on the area.
I miss the turning to Randell Research and find myself in Bokeelia, in the far north of the island. I have passed a load of tropical groves filled with palm trees and exotic fruit, so it feels absolutely right that my Sirius Satellite Radio provided by Mr. Hertz, has a Merengue Station called Caliente, Spanish for hot, playing away for that section of the journey. Somehow BBC World Service doesn't seem right at this moment!
Bokeelia is very laid back, loads of people fishing from a couple of piers and going out in boats. I ask for directions and head for Pineland, where I pass a lovely little wooden post office.
The rather uninspiringly-named Randell Research Centre turns out to be an absolute delight. In association with the Natural History Department of the University of Florida, the RRC interprets the remains of the settlement of Calusa Indians, dating back some 2000 years. There are vast 30 feet high 'middens', mainly of discarded shells, which give archaeologists a remarkable insight into the lifestyle of the Native Americans, two millennia ago. One interpretation is fascinating, suggesting that the chief would have his house on the highest mound, 'height suggesting power, authority and wealth'. I have never thought of it like that, but it is so true. These cultured people lived around these parts until 1821, when, like so many other native Americans and Cuban fishermen, they were made not welcome.
I ask Michael Wylde, the manager of the shop and the laboratory coordinator, why many American people seem to ignore the wealth of history prior to Columbus. The answer is fascinating. 'Schools in any part of the world don't generally teach about the bad things in their history. The enslavement of African Americans is well documented but people do not realise that 10,000 Florida Indians were sold at Charlestown before 1750.' Michael suggests that I read a book on the subject, 'Bury my heart at Wounded Knee' by Dee Brown.
I could have stayed at the Centre for Hours, I even saw a couple of pairs of nesting Ospreys, about which I am getting rather blasé now!
On my return to the Sun and Moon Inn, the irrepressible Curt has his boat all fired up and ready to go. He tells me all about the effects of Hurricane Charlie in 2004, whose eye was just 6 miles from Matlacha. The locals were of course all evacuated, but Curt describes the very scary effects of being in the eye of a storm, the peace, then all hell breaking loose. I's a sobering thought that, despite the natural beauty of a lot of Florida, nature has a way of saying who is boss.
We meet several shop owners, running their businesses in former fishermens' shacks, now brightly painted. Leoma Lovegrove lets me take pictures, despite signs telling me not. She says it's to stop people stealing her ideas, but I think tourists showing the pictures of her extraordinary collections to their friends would do her more good than harm. Curt introduces me to several colleagues in the local Chamber of Commerce, including B J Hickey, who runs the Great Licks Ice Cream Shop. Everybody has the same view. While the national economy is struggling, Matlacha has found a a little niche and is doing very nicely thank you.
Curt is keen to take me to Pampered Pets, who make his dogs' coats pink and purple. Well, it's America.
I take a much needed shower and report downstairs to meet Katie Meckley, from Lee County Convention and Vistor Bureau (www.fortmyers-sanibel.com). She's never met Curt face to face and is being shown a TV fishing programme where fur from the dogs is being used to catch the much-valued Snook from the river just yards away from the house.
Katie takes me to the Tarpon Lodge restaurant where we have the best meal I have had in Florida, after watching the most incredible sunset I have seen so far. The moon and a planet, dazzlingly bright above the setting sun. Astounding.
I have a very tasty starter of blackened, locally caught fish bites, a wonderful salad with crumbled blue cheese and an excellent filet mignon steak. I am surprised to discover red wine from Portland Oregon, Duck Pond by name. It is so nice I have to have another.
The setting is idyllic and while I understand that the area we are in is used for more casual dining during the day, it deserves rather better than cheap plastic picnic chairs and tables without even tablecloths in the evening. The place is much too classy for that.
Back at Curt's, Katie and I go with mine host to watch Snook at the boat dock. The Sun and Moon really is a magical place.

Caladesi Island, possibly as hidden as I'll find in Florida

Caladesi Island State Park, Sunday



I have taken the opportunity to sort out my suitcases. A week into the trip and you can imagine that very few things are where they should be. Inside both, I discover little cards from the Transportation Security Administration. After scanning at Pensacola Airport, they had hand searched both items of my checked in luggage. Not surprising really, I carry more electronic gadgetry with me than Comet has! I had been advised to leave them unlocked. Just as well, because I am told they would simply break them otherwise!
I have an early start, before Sunday breakfast is normally ready for guests at the Pasa Tiempo. But lovely Lotta, the Swedish 'innkeeper' at Pasa Tiempo has prepared a really lovely meal tray for me.
I've been reading the manuals for my Hertz 'Never Lost' and my very upmarket Mercury Sable Car. All my destinations are now carried on a 'Tourism Malaysia' USB pen drive. Having copied them from my laptop. The pen drive just slots into the side of the GPS and, hey presto, it tells me where to go.
It's almost an hour's drive to the Caladesi Island State Park along some of the ghastliest roads I've ever seen. Imagine a twenty mile long tacky seafront, huge advertising hoardings at every angle and level, with a three lane motorway thundering past. One advert proclaims. Doug Stein MD. No scalpel. No needle. 16000 circumcisions completed. True!
The contrast between the vulgarity of the road and the tranquility of the Caladesi and Honeymoon State Parks could not be more acute.
The islands were once connected. Honeymoon is now driveable via a causeway and after paying the $5 entry charge, those people wanting to get to Caladesi, pay another $10 for a 15 minute boat trip. (A sand bar has actually built up in recent years between Clearwater and Caladesi, so you could actually walk to the island, but Americans much prefer a 20 mile road trip!)
My host for the day is Park Ranger Carl Calhoun, who came for a couple of years and stayed for 27. As such, he probably knows more about the State Park than anyone else. He's northern Irish by descent and quite a character. Outside his office, we meet one of the Park volunteers, a guy with a plaited beard, the like of which I have never seen. He's parked his boat at the dock for free and is working a few hours each week to pay off his rent.
Just before Carl takes me out in a kayak, he shows me a skin from a rattlesnake. an eight feet long diamond back, to be exact. And, yes, they, and various other very poisonous snakes hang out on the island. It's a historic place. There are native American burial mounds going back some two thousand years. American history post Columbus? A mere bagatelle!
The kayak trail takes us round the mangroves. No alligators, who only lurk in freshwater and, thankfully, no snakes. But it's a delightful trip and I feel privileged to have had Carl as my guide.
After an excellent lunch at the one simple cafe that is allowed to operate, Carl takes me on an absolutely amazing tour of the one mile square land part of Caledesi. We see a pair of Ospreys building a nest, wild bees nests, pelican, heron, an armadillo, sanderlings, enormous horseshoe crabs and the very British sounding Ruddy turn stone. Carl reckons that, over a year, you can see some 300 varieties of bird on the island. I can believe it.
He's been very generous with his time and I have had an absolutely brilliant day.
Caladesi, with its' 200,000 visitors a year (only a few hundred today) is a very special place indeed.
I am sure they wanted me to tell you that its' beach was voted 'Best Beach in America', 2008. The beach is certainly unspoilt, very charming and totally natural.
But best? I have seen better and I have only been in Florida for a week!