Key West, Florida Keys

The Florida Keys are a coral archipelago, a chain of small coral islands called keys. All over the Caribbean region these small islands (Spanish cayo) are called keys, cays or cayes. Like Harvest Caye, Belize!

There are 70 keys in the Florida Keys, with some very imaginative names. Some of my favourites are No Name Key, Knockemdown Key, Tea Table and Fat Deer Key. Fat Deer Key is named for the feral deer that roam around and occasionally hit cars, according to our guide.

Key West is the last island in the Florida Keys. It's the southernmost point of the USA, only 140 km from Cuba.

The road from Miami to Key West is called the Overseas Highway and is literally over the sea. It's about 180 km long. The trip to and from Key West, and spending some time there, takes a whole day. We took the Gray Line bus that left Miami Bayside at 6.30 am and returned at 9.30 pm.

Some keys appear to be quite affluent (e.g. Islamorada), while others (e.g. Key Largo) appear more basic. This whole area is lobster territory. Note the Giant Lobster — but I'm not sure it beats Larry the Lobster in Kingston, South Australia. More on lobsters to come.

We crossed 42 bridges on our drive to Key West. The longest bridge is Seven Mile Bridge, about 11 km. There's lots of ocean out there.

At one time the Florida Keys were connected by rail. You can listen to our guide telling the story in this video. The trains no longer run, and most of the tracks have been destroyed, but some of the rail tracks that survive have been turned into pedestrian walkways.

Some keys are really, really small.

Pigeon Key (in the next video) is 5 acres big. There are 8 buildings on this little island, some of which were first built to house workers on the railway.

After a few entertaining hours we arrive in Key West. Check out Fat Albert, the tethered blimp. Fat Albert is a low-level satellite used by the Air Force for weather and other super-secret operations. But Fat Albert is not a one-trick pony — it's also used by the US Customs and Border Protection and the Coast Guard in counter-drug trafficking operations. Being the southernmost point of the US, Key West is also a military area. The ugly yellow building belongs to the Navy.

Key West is not called Key West because it's in the west (although it is). It's called Key West from the Spanish Cayo Hueso, literally 'bone island'. When the Spanish landed at Key West, the island was scattered with human bones. Early native inhabitants had used the island as a communal graveyard. The Spanish name, pronounced kayo weso, became Key West in English.

Neither Spain nor Britain was particularly interested in the Keys during the colonial period. The US took possession of Florida from Spain in 1821 and Key West was sold (by Cuba) to an American businessman for $2000. Its strategic location between the US and Mexico, on the trade route from Cuba, the Bahamas and New Orleans, and its deep-water harbour meant that it had business potential and could be developed successfully, and it certainly was.

In the 1830s, Key West was the largest town in Florida and the richest city per capita in the United States — from wrecking revenues. Yep, this was the time of lucrative shipwrecks, for those who salvaged them. The first one to reach a stricken ship had the rights to salvage the ship and its cargo. These would then be sold back to the original owner, at a highly inflated price. Lots and lots of money was made from the trade!

As time went on, and navigation methods improved, there were fewer shipwrecks, but Key West remained the largest and wealthiest city in Florida until the end of the 1880s. I doubt these houses go back back that far (hurricanes etc.) but there's still an elegant feel to the old part of Key West.

The trolley bus does a tourist route around Key West.

And lobsters? You don't need a licence to catch lobsters and you can catch six lobsters at a time. Most fortuitously, there was a lobster festival in town, with a few roads blocked off for festival-goers. Plenty of lobster dishes to choose from ...

... but Ken wanted to sit down, so we found a little lobster cafe on the side of the festival. Lobster and snow crab rolls! And home-made lemonade.

Lobster festival or not, there's definitely a holiday feel to Key West. Visitors can hire golf buggies or scooters, the vibe is definitely summer beach, and there are roaming marijuana-buggy dispensaries if you want some extra vibe. They're recognisable by the extra-large weed joint on top of the roof. Sorry I have no photos ... I was too busy eating snow crab! But I do have a photo of the sand sculpture in a local artist's front yard (which changes regularly), a regular buggy, the 'nude dudes' who clean your car while dressed in skimpy briefs, and the '90 miles to Cuba' marker of the southernmost point of the USA. You can't see it very well behind all the tourists, but I liked the cheery wave from the girl on the scooter.

Ken has a better photo of the '90 miles to Cuba' marker. Slightly better. The truth is we didn't want to get out of the trolley bus at this stop! 90 miles/140 km doesn't seem very far between countries. A young man windsurfed recently from Cuba to Key West. (The first illegal immigrant to land by windsurfer.) But if you have seen the movie Nyad, it's an awfully long way to swim.

Conch shells and conch meat are everywhere in Key West. In fact, the local inhabitants call themselves Conchs (pronounced conks). The Key West high school football team is called the Fighting Conchs and the high school women's basketball team is called the Lady Conchs. And then there's the Conch Republic. In 1982, US border patrol placed blockades on the highway to stop illegal immigration via Key West into mainland US. This stopped all movement into and out of Key West, and affected the tourist traffic. The Conchs were so angry that Key West seceded from the US and declared independence as the Conch Republic. It was clearly a very proud moment as we heard this story multiple times from various guides. The micronation might have been short-lived but you can still buy souvenirs of the Conch Republic — and Key West still celebrates Conch Republic Independence Day every year.

Route 1 in the USA stretches from Key West in the south to the Canadian border in Maine in the north, about 3800 km. About the same distance from Melbourne to Darwin! As you probably know, the north—south highways in the US are odd numbered and the east—west highways are even numbered (like Route 66). Here is the zero mile marker for Route 1 in Key West.

The most popular tourist attraction in Key West is Ernest Hemingway’s house, where he lived in the 1930s with his second wife. (He had four.) It was at this point on a very hot and humid afternoon that Ken decided he was heading to a neighbouring bar for a beer, so this was a solo visit for me.

The house was built originally in 1851 by a wealthy salvager. It was pretty decrepit when Pauline Hemingway saw it around 1930, but she persuaded her wealthy uncle (who funded many Hemingway adventures) to buy it as a wedding gift.

Pauline restored the whole house; the guide noted that Pauline removed the ceiling fans and replaced them with chandeliers … style over comfort. However, the limestone walls are 50 cm thick to withstand hurricanes, so presumably they keep the house relatively cool.

Hemingway wrote some well known fiction here (Green Hills of Africa, To Have and Have Not, Islands in the Stream, short stories 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro' and 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber'). Bear in mind that this was before he went off to the Spanish Civil War to write novels like For Whom the Bell Tolls — and before he met his third wife.

Hermingway's writing room is outside the house, in that room with the stairs going up and down.

While Hemingway was reporting on the Civil War in Spain in 1937, Pauline installed a large pool on the grounds — the first swimming pool in the Florida Keys. It cost $20,000, two and a half times the original cost of the property. The story goes that Hemingway was outraged on his return at how much money his wife had spent. He threw a penny from his pocket onto the ground, saying, 'You might as well take my last cent.' (Turns out Pauline had paid for the pool herself.) The penny was embedded in the concrete as a reminder. There it is, next to the green pole.

The Hemingway house is famous because of Hemingway, but it’s also famous because of the cats that live there … 62 at last count. 'Keep off the furniture' — unless you're a Hemingway cat. They’re particularly famous because about half of them have six toes. The paw prints in the wet cement are from Hemingway's time. Can you see some six-toed prints?

If you know your Hemingway history and the books he wrote, you'll know that Hemingway was the poster boy of the shootin', huntin', fishin' brigade, as well as the drinkin' brigade. 'Sloppy' Joe Russell was a rumrunner during Prohibition and a boat pilot. He was Hemingway's fishing companion and they once caught 54 marlins in 115 days. Hey, it was different times.

Joe was also the owner of Sloppy Joe's Bar, still an institution in Key West. The base of the fountain in Hemingway's garden is a urinal from the original bar. (Hemingway thought he'd spent so much money there that he owned part of it!) Pauline was unimpressed at the gift from Joe and decorated it with tiles and an olive jar from Cuba. It may look prettier, but that's still a urinal down there.

After living in this house for about 10 years, Hemingway moved to Cuba. He and Pauline were divorced, and she lived here until she died. It's now a National Historic Landmark, a museum and a great place to visit. And it's a home for six-toed cats.

Off to our last stop, the Florida Everglades (if you're still with me).