MikePadgett.com

At home with Papa: from Key West to Key Largo

— From Hemingway's home in Key West and north on US-1 to Key Largo in a yellow drop-top Chrysler PT Cruiser.”

Great War ambulance driver, the Lost Generation’s leading light, hunter in the Serengeti, radicalist sympathiser in the Spanish Civil War, Q-Boat captain in Cuba, D-Day correspondent, Nobel Prize winner, friend-turned-enemy of Fidel Castro.

Ernest Hemingway was all of these things.

He was also a resident of Key West, having first visited at the town at the suggestion of John Dos Passos.

His home on Whitehead Street is now a museum for visitors and a home to around sixty plus cats, some descended from the writer’s own polydactyl.

Key West Butterfly Conservatory

Opposite the Avalon Bed & Breakfast towards the bottom end of Duval Street is the Key West Butterfly Conservatory, the brainchild of lifelong lepidopterist Sam Trophia.

Inside the Conservatory a sticky 85°/80% humidity atmosphere provides the ideal conditions for the breeding of butterflies.

On the road

J and I hired a yellow Chrysler PT Cruiser Convertible to drive up through the Keys and back to Miami. It was like driving a sponge, though it was nice to have the top down.

About 35 miles north east of Key West on US-1 is the Bahia Honda State Park. Most landscape photographs taken at Bahia Honda will show the old railroad bridge adapted for US-1 but now superseded by a concrete construction.

Looe Key

With its location about five nautical miles off Big Pine Key, divers and snorkellers usually agree that Looe Key is one of the best reefs to visit in the Florida Keys.

In 1744, the British ship HMS Looe ran aground and sank while attempting to cross the reef with a French ship in tow. There is little evidence of the remains of the Looe or its towload today.

We found Looe Key to be tremendously popular with barracuda – many of them were hanging about at various depths. A couple of larger sharks and a spotted eagle ray were also in residence. Looe Key was certainly the richest reef we saw on our three snorkelling trips.

Islamorada and Key Largo

We spent Christmas at Islamorada in the Upper Keys and daytripped to Key Largo, which likes to call itself – rather dubiously – the Diving Capital Of The World.

While snorkelling the reefs off Key Largo, the underwater housing for our camera flooded and the camera itself was destroyed.

In the end, we left Key Largo half seasick with the pitch and roll of the boat on very choppy seas and suffering from numerous jellyfish stings.