Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 7, 1993 TAG: 9302080239
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELIZABETH GUNN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
THE KEYS
DEPLANE in Miami airport, crossroads of the Western Hemisphere and Europe, one of the great people-watching venues of the world. The entrance gate is lined with cruise directors holding up signs, "Princess; Carnival; Discovery." At the luggage carousels, a dive club returning from Grand Cayman jostles with a Venezuelan family coming to Miami to shop till they drop. Loudspeakers alternate English and Spanish; you hear several European languages and the lyrical patois of Caribbean islands in the crowds around you.Pick up the keys to one of the thousands of rental cars that whirl through Miami every week, and emerge into the hot bright clamorous street, already thinking about which garments to shed. Shirtsleeved in the air-conditioned anonymity of a strange car, make careful way through fast heavy exit traffic to Florida's Turnpike, take the south option, tune the radio and settle back: you're on your way to the Florida Keys, the Caribbean you can drive to.
First, a quick physics lesson: an irresistible force met a great many moveable objects when Hurricane Andrew made its way through South Miami in August, and the landscape, beginning just a few miles south of the airport, looks as if it had been processed by the Cuisinart from Hell. The confusion deepens as you travel south; thousands of palm trees are twenty-foot stumps with fringe growing back on top, a colossal roofing project is going on, and some empty lots are devoted entirely to bulldozed mountains of very expensive trash, which recently was parts of homes.
And then it's over. Andrew had neat sharp edges, and on "The Stretch," the 20-mile two-lane road that connects the Keys to the mainland, you see that a few trees are down, but by the time you cross onto Key Largo all traces of storm damage have vanished. Pretty and peaceful as ever, fringed with palms and brightened by great sprawls of bougainvillea, Key Largo dreams in the sunshine.
Largo is the largest of some three dozen islands, connected by a hundred miles of highway and 42 bridges, which comprise the Florida Keys. Much of it is intensely developed for tourism, with hotels, dive shops, deep-sea fishing boats, three state parks. But its look is more random than commercial; shops, motels and marinas are scattered along the roadway, interspersed with empty lots and trees. There are no tall buildings. Glorious white birds, cattle egrets and herons, flash through the trees and stalk in the ditches.
A small, discreet sign marks John Pennecamp Coral Reef State Park, an underwater park that allows visitors to experience the only living coral reef in North America. You can swim, snorkel, dive, and camp in the park; boats take you out to the reef, six to eight miles offshore, and people who don't want to get in the water can take the glass-bottom boat and see the same fish.
At the bottom of Key Largo, the little town of Tavernier has a shopping center, theater, hospital, marinas and dive shops. And restaurants; this string of coral islands, from top to bottom, is liberally sprinkled with eating places. Food service covers the spectrum from roadside shack to white-linen elegance, but the typical style is casual, with servers in shorts, often with indoor-outdoor choices in seating, many with a roadside-waterside exposure so you can arrive in either a boat or a car. Virtually all serve the local favorites: conch chowder and fritters, key lime pie and fresh fish fixed every possible way and ranging from good to exquisite.
About the word "conch:" it's pronounced "konk," to rhyme with "honk," and is the name of the large beautiful mollusk once abundant, now gravely endangered, in the waters surrounding the Keys. (The conch shells you see in the many shell stores here are imported; gathering live conch in Florida waters is illegal.) "Conch" also has become a term, somewhere between affection and irony, to describe the natives of these islands, as well as some of their laid-back ways. The aged, dented, rusted-out flivvers driven by some locals are called "conch cruisers," and a certain look - bearded, sunburned, dressed in ancient cutoffs, ragged T-shirt and flip-flops - is dubbed "real conch." Temperatures stay somewhere in the 80s most of the year, so it's not possible to wear many clothes in the Keys, and attitudes toward dress codes are easy-going. The only way you'll get stared at here is by wearing a three-piece suit.
Tavernier spills over onto Plantation Key, and it's hard to tell where the town stops, because the rest of the island is covered with houses and yacht clubs. Cross Snake Creek onto Windley Key, and there's "Theater of the Sea" on the left, where you can pet a shark, meet a stingray, see the dolphins jump, even swim with them if you like.
At the bottom of Windley Key, Holiday Isle is a big, full-service resort with a youthful orientation, where there's usually a volleyball game going, and the outdoor dancing starts by midafternoon. Holiday Isle has a big fleet of fishing boats and facing it across Whale Harbor, Whale Harbor Resort and Bud 'n' Mary's have equally big ocean-going fleets.
And just below, on Upper Matecumbe Key, Islamorada styles itself "The Sport Fishing Capital of the World." Fishing, in the Keys, falls somewhere between universal passion and official state religion.
Long Key begins the Middle Keys, where the mood is quieter, more country. On Grassy Key, it gets downright sleepy, which is how the people who live here want to keep it. The town of Marathon, on Vaca and Boot Keys, is a busy tourist center, with big party boats, several dive shops and the ubiquitous restaurants, bars and motels, yet the underlying ambiance is slow-paced, tropical, a little dreamy. Partly it's the water: everywhere you look, the sea lies gleaming under the tropical sun, the Atlantic Ocean on one side, the Gulf of Mexico on the other, all of it inviting you to slow down, get out of the car and get your feet wet.
People are standing, sitting and swimming in the water, and afloat on the water in waverunners, windsurfers, dinghies, sailboats, launches, trawlers and oceangoing yachts. A high proportion of the men of Marathon spend their lives on boats, as charter captains, divemasters or lobstermen.
Most people charter a boat to go fishing, with an experienced captain to show them where the big ones are. But you don't have to hire anybody; if you have purchased your fishing license, you can simply bait your line and walk out on one of the bridges, drop your line in the sea and share the anticipation with the pelican who surely will be watching your every move.
Southwest of Marathon, the world turns to water as you cross Seven Mile Bridge, a structure so phenomenal it has attracted its own sporting event: the Seven Mile Bridge Race. Crossing the bridge by car, you find yourself in a world so bright and blue it makes you feel dazzled and oddly childlike. Boats sail under you, adding to your sense of unreality. Pelicans soar in neat formations, sometimes lower than your car, and cormorants perch on the guywires of telephone poles. In the distance, you can see freighters in the Gulf Stream.
Just over the bridge, Bahia Honda State Park affords a small, charming rest stop, a chance to snorkel a quiet bay, walk out on the old bridge for a bird's-eye-view of the ocean or take a boat trip out to the reef. There's a camp ground, too, and many people base their vacation here; it's a pretty, peaceful place.
A few miles below Bahia Honda the road turns north, then west, to cross Big Pine Key, the most countrified of the settled keys, and home to the endangered Key Deer. Big Pine Key residents are passionate about their island, and have a strong ecological bent. There are tourist amenities - an RV park, a dive shop, restaurants - and this location suits people who like a rural lifestyle.
The next 20 miles appear strictly rural, too, though Cudjoe and Sugarloaf Keys have residential areas that don't show from the highway. The Saddlebunch Keys, mostly mangrove hammocks barely above the water, are really unsettled. Boca Chica carries the big Naval Air Station.
Stock Island (which used to be the pasture for Key West livestock) is still filled with useful things: a public golf course, a college, two hospitals. And at last, you've run out of road, and are looking at the sharp right turn that signals your arrival at the southernmost key.
The City of Key West occupies its island completely; it is full up, brimming over, and still people keep coming. Tourist Mecca, artists' retreat, Navy base and architectural treasure, Key West has the fractured personality of its roller-coaster past, boomtown present and always uncertain future. From its raffish beginnings as pirates' den and wreckers' haven, through the soldier years when the ship captains and cigar manufacturers built their lovely gingerbread-covered houses, Key West was a remote small island town with strong Caribbean roots. Most early settlers were from the Bahamas and Cuba, with a scattering of sailors from everywhere. Then Flagler's railroad started the tourist business, and the Navy came and turned it into a sort of company town - but better, because the shrimpers and fishermen kept a strong presence. Tourism went bust in the Great Depression, but when the war was over it started flowing again over the new highway that connected the Keys to the mainland, and it's been growing ever
Blessed with near-perfect weather, abundant fish in the sea and a coral reef a few miles offshore, Key West has it all. All the hotel chains and fast-food shops are here, as well as upscale resorts like The Reach and a dozen or so exceptional restaurants. On one of its big weekends, during Spring Break or the opening of lobster season or Fantasy Fest at Hallowe'en, Key West can become wall-to-wall people. Usually it's a little calmer than that, sort of a controlled hubbub.
Unique features emerse from the blur of T-shirt shopns and mopeds: Fast Buck Freddie's hides shrewd merchandising behind a brash, funky facade. Sloppy Joe's claims to be the Main Bar, and defends its corner with plenty of loud live music day and night, creating an oasis of three-on-a-stool silliness. The lovely old houses so affectionately restored by their owners lend a gracious presence curiously at odds with the clatter in the street; the tropical trees and flowers that crowd the yards create a sensual counterpoint to the crowds.
Then there are the icons: Hemingway lived and worked here, and his home is a shrine. Key West has had a thriving artists' colony since the 1930s; its big names include Tennessee Williams, John dos Passos, Wallace Stevens, John Hersey, Allison Lurie. Audubon toured and sketched birds in the Keys in the 1830's; now his work is displayed in Audubon House. Mel Fisher's Treasure House shows and sells a portion of his great finds of Spanish treasure. Jimmy Buffett is the most successful of current stars living here; he has a clothing store and restaurant named "Margaritaville."
Some people come to Key West for their whole vacation, diving and fishing by day and enjoying the exuberant night life after dark. Most stay a few days "for the action," take a picture of the sign that says "southernmost point in the USA," then drift back up the road. They'll stop at Big Pine to try the diving out at Looe Key, or at Marathon to go bonefishing with a guide.
One group never gets past Duck Key, where there's a big posh resort called Hawk's Cay that has four restaurants, eight tennis courts, a deep-sea fishing fleet, snorkel and scuba boats. At Cheeca Lodge in Islamorada, smart corporations combine company meetings with a spot of fishing and some pitch-and-putt golf. A sizeable population of old keys hands has as its destination one of the RV parks, where they set up housekeeping, play a lot of cards and fish off the bridges or out of their own small trailered boat. And for the divers, nothing that happens on land is very important, except getting enough high-calorie food into their bodies so they can go out and explore the reef some more.
There's a place in the Florida Keys for all these goals, because the weather allows a year-round tourist season and the sea, so big and bounteous on all sides, absorbs a large portion of the recreation. And the visitors keep coming because they find here something unique in the hemisphere: a society that's apple-pie American in language, currency and amenities, in a setting where climate, birds, flowers and the sea around are languorously, sensually Caribbean.
Elizabeth Gunn is a free-lance travel writer who lives in Key Largo, Fla.
If you go
Any of these Chamber of Commerce offices will give you information on their area, as well as general information covering all the Florida Keys:
Key Largo -1-800-822-1088
Islamorada -1-800-322-5397
Marathon -1-800-842-9580
Lower Keys (Big Pine Key) - 1-800-872-3722
Key West -1-800-648-6269
Fishing Hot Line - 1-800-543-4749 - will send a list of the year's tournaments, of charter boat captains, and of back-country guides.
John Pennecamp Coral Reef State Park - 1-305-451-1621 - for information about scuba, snorkel, glass-bottom and rental boats in the park.