Florida Keys to Cape Canaveral – Double Dutch World Safari

Florida Keys to Cape Canaveral

After leaving Key Biscayne our first stop was Miami, population nearly 6.5 million. Miami is the second most populous city in Florida after Jacksonville. It has the third largest skyline in the USA with over 300 high rises. More than 60 exceed 150 meters. It is also nicknamed the “Capital of Latin America” because of its high population of Spanish-speakers.

Having been to Miami on various occasions this time we did not spend a lot of time in Miami.

Miami has sometimes been called the “Gateway to Latin America” because of the magnitude of its commercial and cultural ties to Latin America.

After Fidel Castro rose to power in Cuba following the Revolution in 1959, many wealthy Cubans sought refuge in Miami, further increasing the city’s population.

Miami is the second-largest U.S. city with a Spanish-speaking majority (after El Paso in Texas), and the largest city with a Cuban/American background.

The Port of Miami is the world’s largest cruise ship port and passenger port in the world; It also is home to the headquarters for many of the world’s largest cruise companies.

The port is one of the USA busiest cargo ports, importing 11,000.000 tons of cargo. Miami served over 7 million cruise passengers in 2023.

Tourism is one of the Miami’s largest private-sector industries, accounting for more than 144,800 jobs. Miami Beach is the cities playground, a mix of art deco, Mediterranean and modern structures and an endless list of hotels, bars, restaurants, roof top bars, nightclubs, discotheques, retail, souvenirs shops and amusement.

The city’s frequent portrayal in music, film, and popular culture has made the city and its landmarks recognizable worldwide. In 2023 it attracted the second-highest number of foreign tourists of any city in the United States, after New York City, and is among the top 20 cities worldwide by international visitor spending. More than 19 million visitors arrived in Miami in 2023 adding $33 billion to the economy. With a large hotel infrastructure and the newly renovated Convention centre, Miami is a popular destination for annual conventions and conferences.

Following the road north we passed Palm Beach. Palm Beach’s reputation as a playground for the wealthy persists too. The affluence is palpable along Worth Avenue, where fine art, labels like Cartier and Chanel and established restaurants, bars and night clubs grace Mediterranean storefronts and courtyards.

Only 50 Kilometres north of Maimi lies Fort Lauderdale. It is seen as part of the Miami metropolitan area. With over 300 kilometres of inland waterways, it is also called the Venice of America. Fort Lauderdale has the third largest cruise port in the world. (Port Everglades) With over 50,000 registered yachts and 100 marinas, Fort Lauderdale is also known as the yachting capital of the world. The area has over 15 million overnight visitors in 2023 (2 million more than before Covid) and nearly 5 million cruise passengers.

Fort Lauderdale has become synonymous with luxury – resorts, yachts, and dream homes and the beaches on the Atlantic Ocean. Fort Lauderdale’s beachfront promenade is full of bars and restaurants, entertainment, events and retail shops. The Intracoastal Waterway is responsible for and a Venetian-like canal system where water taxis and, even, gondolas run.

Like in other parts of the USA discrimination or Apartheid was also around in Fort Lauderdale. Till 1961 only whites were allowed on Ft. Lauderdale beaches. There were no beaches for African Americans in the Fort Lauderdale area until 1954, when “the Coloured Beach,” (now named Johnston State Park), was opened at Dania Beach. However, no road was built to it until 1965. On July 4, 1961, African Americans started a series of wade-ins as protests at beaches that were off-limits to them, to protest “the failure of the county to build a road to the Negro beach. On July 11, 1962, the city’s policy of racial segregation of public beaches, and Broward County beaches ended.

Further north we crossed Hollywood with its 5 kilometres of boardwalks and within 1 kilometre from the vibrant boardwalk you can walk, canoe or kayak through the mangroves. Hollywood has a historic downtown, with lots of sidewalk cafes, galleries, and Art.

1975 was our last visit to Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space centre, time for a second visit. Today over 5 million passengers cruise from its port annually, making it one of the world’s busiest. But this is also one of Florida’s most nature-adoring beach communities, with 3 parks. One of them, Jetty Park is where we stayed for a few days, it features a well-equipped 24-hour fishing pier; free, public boat ramps; camping; and a life-guarded beach for swimming. In season, right whales, and manatees glide by, and sea turtle’s nest. We watched the cruise liners come and go. There is a waterfront leisure area at Port Canaveral, where bars, restaurants for all budgets serve great food, drinks and entertainment afternoons and nights 7 days a week; most nights you have a choice of live music, comedy, or karaoke.

Nearby is Cocoa Beach, “Surf” being the word in this village with beachy locales. Cocoa Beach’s Ron Jon Surf Shop is open 24 hours a day all year round and the town’s Easter Surf Festival is one of the longest-running events in the U.S.

Kennedy Space Centre.

This is one of 10 NASA field centres, a premier multiuser spaceport with more than 90 private-sector partners and nearly 250 partnership agreements. The presence of commercial companies at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is larger than ever before. The centre also is home to facilities that research and develop innovative solutions that commercial space ventures need for working and living on the surfaces of the Moon and other bodies in our solar system.

The Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex is the visitor centre at NASA Space Centre. It features exhibits and displays, historic spacecraft and memorabilia, 2 large IMAX theatres, and a range of bus tours of the spaceport. The “Space Shuttle Atlantis” exhibit has the Atlantis orbiter and the Shuttle Launch simulator, where we had a simulated ride into space. The centre also provides astronaut training experiences, including a Mars Base simulator. We were lucky due to poor weather in the area it was quiet the day we visited (Kennedy Space Centre attracts around 4 million people a year.)

The complex had its beginning in 1963. An estimated 100,000 visitors went through that first year. By 1964, more than 250,000 self-guided car tours, permitted between 1 and 4 pm were seen at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). In 1965 $2 million was spend on a full-scale visitor centre, covering 42 acres. Spaceport USA attracted 500,000 visitors in 1967, its first year, and one million by 1969. Ten-thousand visitors toured the centre on December 24, 1968, following the Apollo 8 orbit of the Moon.

As NASA neared the Moon, popularity grew. By 1969, the visitor centre was the second most visited Florida attraction, behind Tampa’s Busch Gardens.

Between 1995 and 2007, the visitors centre went through many changes, including the improvement of restaurants, retail shops, buses, and new exhibits. It is also when the visitor complex got its current name, Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Since then, the facility has been entirely self-supporting and receives no taxpayer or government funding.

In 2013 The Space shuttle Atlantis went on display offering a 360° view of the shuttle. Atlantis is positioned at a 43.21° angle with the payload bay doors open: a view only previously seen in space. The exhibit also includes a life-sized replica of the Hubble Space Telescope.

On the ground level is the “Forever Remembered” exhibit, commemorating the 14 astronauts lost in both Space Shuttle Challenger and Space Shuttle Columbia disasters. The area also includes personal artifacts from the astronauts, two recovered pieces of the Shuttles, footage of the physical and emotional recovery, and the return to flight.