Gators!

We've just spent 3 days in the Everglades in Florida, on our way down to Chile. The weather was pretty warm and humid. The Everglades ecosystem is fascinating, huge and very wet! It's also quite disturbed and smaller than it used to be (Miami is pretty much built on what was once part of the Everglades). There are also a lot of mozzies (like a laughable amount) that appear late in the day at the very southern end at a settlement called Flamingo. It was a focussed natural excursion looking at 'gators, critters and birds from cars, bikes, boardwalks and boats. Here are some pics....

There be 'gators! Down at Flamingo, they also have Crocodiles, which are lighter in colour and look a lot like our crocodiles (whilst salt tolerant, they are more docile than ours). This photo is of an Alligator, which are black and have 'U' shaped snouts (not 'V' shape like Crocodiles)....

There are good boardwalks in various locations:

Plenty of interesting birdlife:

Dragonfly:

Our 'Backwater' cruise was great with interesting narration from the guide:

Oh boy, what a lot of mozzies - we had to get some head nets!...

They have a Florida Panther here, but very elusive. In fact, it is the same as a Mountain Lion or Cougar - all the same thing. Elsewhere, a Panther is a black Jaguar or Leopard. Simples....

Note 'U' shaped snout. Just over the side of a boardwalk....

Look carefully for all the stripy babies nearby, again just near the boardwalk....

We drove over to the Biscayne National Park on the east coast of the Florida peninsula for a quick look. This is Miami from there - we didn't have time to visit. It has a very large Art Deco precinct that would be worth a look sometime...

Shark Valley is a 24km loop road through the National Park to either cycle or go on a little wheeled 'tram' ride. We cycled. Half way around there is a mid-century lookout tower which is quite striking....

On our way back to the airport we visited some Cypress forests in the Big Cypress National Preserve, just next to Everglades National Park. At the very end it rained heavily, making freeway driving to the airport that night a bit exciting!....

 

We're Off - to LA

The trip is off to a great start. We've just finished 3 days in LA and it was fab - great weather and a pretty breezy time. This is the start of a long trip that will take us down to South America, then over to Europe and home via SE Asia. In LA we met up with our friends Chris and El for the first two days, who came down from San Francisco. Chris and I did a few guitar safari's (visiting guitar shops) but we otherwise visited various galleries. We have just arrived in Miami for our next stopover before South America (when I'll post again). Here are some pics...

On our way:

Venice Beach, Marina del Ray and Downtown (distance) arriving at LAX:

The Paramount Studio was awesome. It was our first stop on Saturday. This is the central historic section where offices housed producers and writers etc, whilst actors used to have dressing rooms along the left side (not trailers). Elvis lived in the dark one whilst filming. Various movies and TV shows have used this precinct:

Typical scene between sound stages:

These lights come on when filming in a sound stage:

This is sound stage 18, where Hitchcock filmed all of Rear Window with an urban New York City set, complete with cars. It is huge. They have over 30 sound stages:

As at Warner Brothers Studio, each sound stage has a sign with some movies that were shot there:

Out the back are their city streets, mostly based on New York. The facades are only a few metres deep:

Nearby is a tank for water scenes (the car park) and a huge sky screen they were currently painting for a production:

Note 'Hollywood' sign in distance:

The Broad is a billionaire's gallery Downtown. We visited Saturday afternoon. It has free entry in a fancy building (on the left next to the Disney Concert Hall by Frank Ghery) currently being extended:

This is the Jasper Johns room - note stainless steel ballon dog with porcelain Michael Jackson on right:

The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has one of her mirror rooms at The Broad:

Coyote Cafe (Mexican) that night, near where we were staying:

On Sunday we went out to the Huntington Library, Gallery and Garden at Pasadena. It was an upgraded mansion from the early 20th century with a phenomenal garden and great galleries...and Hummingbirds:

Video - very clever critters:

The Chinese Garden was huge and had a fantastic bonsai collection:

The desert garden was massive and had plenty of outrageous plants:

There were two large separate galleries for American and European art which were fantastic. I particularly liked the display of design from a Californian arts and crafts team called Greene and Greene in the early 1900's:

On Monday we visited the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences Museum which was all about movies and the movie industry. Adjacent was LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) which was massive. The new David Geffen Gallery just opened this year with views across the precinct:

This installation (visible in the above photo too) is at the entry to LACMA - 220 restored gas lanterns from Southern California:

View across LA from LACMA:

One gallery had a great exhibition about design evolution in the home and about experimental house design from the early mid-century - two of the space age round aluminium houses in the foreground were actually built (very George Jetson):

These little autonomous delivery vehicles were quite common on the footpaths: