From San Diego we had another 24 hour journey across to the East Coast. I had my first experience of driving on the wrong side of the road whilst extremely sleep deprived but fortunately survived the ordeal. Our first stop was the beautifully serene St Augustine, home to the oldest building in America – Castillo de San Marcos, a masonry fort built in 1672. That weekend it was also home to lots of overweight, pony-tailed men sporting bandanas in place of helmets, drawn by the annual Daytona Motorbike Fest. We made friends with a few of them in the bar who tried to persuade us to jump on the back of their bikes and head up to the festival with them. We politely declined.

We then drove all the way down the East coast of Florida to the idyllic Keys. Although we were fast approaching winter it was insanely hot, I almost had a melt-down when walking around in the packed Key West looking for accommodation. Turns out we had again timed our visit well (or not) and we were there for ‘Fantasy Fest’ which as far as I can gather from the night we spent amongst the festivities is an excuse for middle aged men and women to walk around semi naked in bondage gear. Luckily we spent most of our time at the less popular Islamorada, floating around in kayaks, playing pool basketball (very aggressively) and feeding the Tarpons. A school of around 100 of these huge aquatic beasts gather in Robbie’s marina every day and for a few bucks you can grab a bucket of bait, dangle your hand down and if you’re brave enough leave it there until they jump out of the water and grab their lunch. Every time their huge mouths came out of the water I screamed and inadvertently threw the fish in random directions, much to the amusement and concern of all the other tourists.

Hungry tarpon

Palm tree sunset over Islamorada

Tempting as it was we couldn’t lounge around in Paradise forever, we had a music festival to go to.  At the end of October the university town of Gainesville is transformed into a punk rock paradise with over 300 bands playing at various venues for a solid 2 days. We met lots of awesome new friends, discovered lots of great bands and drank lots of ubiquitous $2 PBR tallboys. We also learnt that you should never attempt registration line up without plenty of fireworks.

Flatliners in the sun. Perfect Sunday

Fest survival kit: PBR and fireworks

When Fest was over it was time to get back to the serious business of finding a vehicle to live in for the next few months. We’d been searching the local classifieds fruitlessly for a couple of days (not having transport makes the logistics of this pretty difficult) and were pretty keen to get out of Gainesville which had gone from musical utopia to boring suburbia. Walking down the street we came across what looked like our perfect van, old enough to be within budget, clean enough to take us to Canada and beyond and big enough for us to be comfortable for a few months. We test drove, checked and bargained our way to the purchase. Sorting out the insurance and registration was not so easy and took another 12 hours of research, hassle and hemorrhaging money. You cannot obtain registration plates without insurance and most insurance companies will not touch you without a permanent address, social security number and valid State license which of course I have none. Eventually we found some back-street joint, run by Mexicans who didn’t ask too many questions and gave us basic insurance for an inflated price.

The ‘van of dreams’ complete with Florida plates

Finally we got on the road, destination unknown but with a vague notion of heading to New Orleans. First we had to sleep, mundane red tape issues are surprisingly draining and we pulled up in the San Felasco Hammock Preserve State Park. I had been craving some open spaces away from roads and people and although this was a far cry from the wilderness it was as close as I’d come to it for a while. It is apparently home to the Florida bobcat and a ferocious looking wild hog which I imagined were the scraping noises around our van as we lay there, too cold to sleep. Hurricane Sandy had caused very irregular temperatures and that night was close to freezing. We were extremely unprepared with a couple of thin blankets on the hard floor of the van. The night seemed to last an eternity, especially when at 3am a local police officer started banging on the door with his truncheon, demanding to see visa’s and ID’s and barking lots of questions as to the motive of our stay. When he realised we weren’t plotting any acts of terrorism he was more sympathetic but still seemed confused at why anyone would want to live in a van for months on end, especially up North in winter. We were starting to question it ourselves. 

The next morning we awoke to a grey sunrise and got back on the road. After defrosting our insides with coffee we were feeling pretty good until about 30 miles down the road when our new home decides to shoot the piston from its engine in protest at being driven over 45 miles an hour. Luckily we could pull over safely and jump out while smoke poured from the engine and we saw our hard earned cash go up in smoke. We called up the guy who had sold us the van in disgust and he agreed to send a tow truck to pick us up so he could check out the damage. At this stage I still naively believed he would have the common decency to either give us our money back, or at least replace the engine free of charge. 

While we were waiting we had the pleasure of meeting Mike from Alabama whose yard we had conveniently crashed into. I could hardly understand what he was saying, his Southern drawl was so strong but he was definitely full of that ‘Southern hospitality’ and cooked us some sausages (unfortunately, I must re-phrase, he shouted at his wife to cook them), lit a bonfire and introduced us to his pet turkeys. He also raised our spirits with his absolute belief that Florida ‘Lemon Law’ states that you can return a vehicle within 3 days if it has a major mechanical fault. Unfortunately for us this only applies if you buy from a dealership, not a private sale which left us stuck in Gainesville, $3000 down.

A couple of turkeys, stuck somewhere outside Gainesville

It was hard to stay positive after such a blow to our resources and I was so angry at myself for letting a conman mechanic fool us out of our money. We cut our losses, scrapped the van for a bit of cash and caught the next Greyhound to Tampa to stay stayed at a bohemian hostel called Grams Place to lick our wounds for a few days and discuss our next strategy…