Rhonda Bracey: At Random

We were up early this morning (as we have been every morning… even when we didn’t have to be) and on the road to the place where we were meeting the River of Grass representative for our Everglades airboat tour. Their advice was to do an earlier tour before the animals hide away from the airboats and/or it gets too hot for them to be out.

Bob was our very knowledgeable and competent driver who showed us some fantastic sights in the 90 exhilarating minutes we were on the airboat. We saw HEAPS of alligators and birds, and lots of various vegetation.

Wall to wall alligators

“Hello, breakfast!”This tour and the kayaking in the mangroves in Key West were the best nature-based highlights of this trip, and I would highly recommend both.

After the airboat tour, we drove further down Highway 41 to the Miccosukee Indian lands. We had a nice lunch at their restaurant (Indian tacos for me, and we split a Florida Orange Sunshine Cake), then wandered around in their gift shop where I saw some of their patchwork designs. The Miccosukee are part of the Seminole nation, thus many of their patchwork designs are what I would call ‘Seminole’ patterns.

This evening we caught a cab to South Beach (which was much further than it looked on the map!), meeting the organiser (Marie, originally from Denmark) and the six others on the South Beach Culinary Tour.

Our first stop was Bolivar (on Washington Ave) to sample some Colombian cuisine (empanadas and a fish ceviche of some sort; the two vegetarians had suitable versions of these). By the way, Bolivar also does a very nice mojito!

Next was Manolo, where we tasted Argentine-style churros filled with a caramel made from condensed milk. Yummy!

At Larios on the Beach (Emilio Estevan’s restaurant on Ocean Drive), we were all taken with the clean and crisp interior design. There we were served a Cuban dish (can’t remember what it was called, but it translates as ‘old clothes’) of a slow-cooked beef mixture, with fried plantain strips. NOTE: All the dishes served were fairly small – the aim was to get a taste of the various cuisines available in South Beach.

After looking at some different architectural styles along Ocean Drive, our next stop was The Tides, a classic Art Deco building that is now a luxury hotel. There we had a lovely delicate Moroccan-style chicken curry dish on a bed of Israeli couscous.

Next we turned away a little from the beachfront (we never did see the actual beach!), and stopped at Blocks Pizza Deli to sample one of their vegetarian pocket pizzas (sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, VERY salty feta, basil, etc.) made with their own sourdough crust. The crust was delicious as would the pocket pizza have been had the feta not been so salty.

Our last stop was Milani Gelateria, where we had Italian gelato. I had the vanilla and it was lovely. My only concern was that the server did not wear food handling gloves or something over his hair as he reached in and scooped the gelato.

Overall, I think this walking tour gave us a good taste of the various cuisines in South Beach, which is what it intended to do. As an Australian, almost all these cuisines were unfamiliar to me, so I got quite a bit out of it, as well as some delicious-tasting food! The company—Miami Culinary Tours—has several tours, including one for Little Havana, which would also be interesting.