Quality!

"America is one massive piece of infrastructure", said Rusty, and he was right, as we cruised north along Interstate 95, bound for Fort Lauderdale, boggling at the number of lanes on the highway, the quantity of elevated fly-overs and the swarms of V10 pick-ups plying their way across it all. One huge American flag and a hundred others flew proudly all over some local car yard and in similar quantities all the way along the highway. Bumper stickers proclaimed the patriotism of the driver: 'Freedom isn't free'; 'Support our troops'; or my favourite, 'Life, liberty and the pursuit of all those who threaten it - US Navy' .

Taking a break from the frenetic traffic, the average punter gorges themselves on massive plates of fare that reduce the amount of chewing required and maximise the daily salt and fat intake at each sitting. We ate this food and spent some time either fighting off sleep or waddling like penguins for some time after the meal was over. Gore is right: America has to change its ways with regard to energy consumption - both in terms of transportation fuel and the energy required to produce all of their food - or we're all fucked. It's plain to see the need for more cheap oil to sustain the lifestyle to which they've become accustomed. But how anyone in the world could go hungry while so many Americans get around on electric wheelchairs (mobility carts) due to hyper-obesity is both a mystery and a scandal. I'm pretty sure that I am not a whole lot better that these Americans, so please forgive me if I am cutting the figure of a self-righteous preacher. If we could all just get out of the car and walk maybe things would be a little different?

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The flight across the Pacific was alright. Thanks be to ye lord for on-demand video and all-you-can-handle video games, television and sports documentaries. Hordes of US Customs officials stood at every level of their comprehensive security screening systems upon arrival, on the lookout for the next shoe bomber. They weren't as manical as I'd envisioned, but they were thorough. If your boarding pass gets the special stamp SSSS in the bottom right hand corner, you get an extra once-over from security. Russ was the lucky recipient at LAX, but we all got it a couple of times before our four trips in and out of the US over the next two weeks.

Upon hitting Miami after a standard cross country flight from LA , the Man of the Moment, the King of the High Seas, Mr Beefer was waiting at baggage collection to pick us up. A short drive to downtown Miami, a change of clothes and we were out at a tequila bar in South Beach at midnight, smashing buckets of Corona and feeding on quesadillas, with the odd shot of fine, fine tequila to mix it up. After a few more smoky bars and pints of lager, and thanks to the International Date Line, by the time bed beckoned, we'd been up for 44 hours.

Fast forward a little while and we found ourselves about 25 miles up the coast in Fort Lauderdale visiting on Beef's megayacht. If you've never seen 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous', the scale and luxury of water craft in this category may elude you: Think 50m long with a 9m beam and four levels of the most sumptuous luxury we could have imagined. The twin CAT diesel engines at 3500kW a piece, the 8m tender, the two jet skis with electric pivot crane to drop them into the water, the 8 sets of diving gear, sail boats, jacuzzi on the top deck, dual sunning areas, 12 person dining room, drawing rooms, master suite with hs and hers mirrored bathrooms... all finished in the finest woods, laquers and steels. Excessive yes, but amazing too.

Beef is the chef for this fine craft, and for a chef he makes a pretty good tour guide as well. Word on the street is that this boat sells for around the US$36 million mark, second hand, complete with 11 member crew. And if you don't have the spare dineros in your skyrocket, you can charter it for US$225,000 a week. Happy days.

We left Fort Lauderdale bound for Cape Canaveral but were waylaid by a torrential downpour out of the Gulf of Mexico. Damn rain. I belted the Pontiac into a gutter that looked like a ramp but didn't sustain any damage. And so we dodged minor flooding for the next hour or two and, upon seeing a port in the storm, we pulled into the Vero Beach Hotel, in Vero Beach, FL.

The Vero Beach Hotel in 1963 would have held some serious swingin' parties where you could drink and dance and jitterbug all night long. Right on the beach with a 'lagoon' pool, hot damn it would have been the place! But hey, when a place don't get no maintainence for 40 years, it accumulates a certain funk that sticks to the inside of your nostrils which can't be removed even with sustained scrubbing, scratching and digging. But at $99 a night, it served us well.

Cape Canaveral: NASA space port, rocket launching centre, tourist attraction. A theme park and a working space port combined. We got straight on the bus that drives you to all of the places of interest, and you do need that bus as the various areas housing the mission control centre, the launch pads, the Saturn V rocket centre and so on are literally miles apart. Alas, the tour was very passive and used videos to explain things instead of people and in some parts was quite dumbed down. But it was packed, absolutely overflowing with fellow tourists, most of whom were good ole patriotic Americans. Heaps of those hyper-obese types too, some with their own mobility chairs, some who took advantage of the free wheelchair service, munching on giant pretzels, litre buckets of Pepsi and assorted candy and ice-cream.

The highlight was the Saturn V rocket centre. This is the rocket used to launch Apollo 8 and subsequent Apollo moon missions. It is huge: 36 stories high, maybe 18m diameter and hanging there above your head in its multiple stages. Russ grabbed a hamburger there which was one of the poorest excuses for food he had ever seen. To peel back the bun and reveal what was not inside the burger was humorous indeed.

Back on the road again, like Willie Nelson, we bee-lined it for Miami and the flight to Barbados. I got the SSSS stamp and the guy checking out my carry on bag said, "Sir, can you please explain what this is". I replied, "Yes, that's a sleeping bag". "Well I've never seen one of those before".

Quality!

We got right on the Samuel Adams bottles at the bar waiting for our plane. It was three hours delayed, and we were quite hammered by the time it left. No harm done though, and we checked into Ella Fitzgerald with no hassles, at 2:00am. Straight out of bed the following morning and into Kensington Oval for the Australia v Ireland clash. We agreed to stay off the drink until lunch, but as Punter chose to bowl first, actually getting to lunch with play remaining seemed far-fetched. It was 1-1, then 2-2 and then a score I've never seen in a lifetime of watching cricket: 3-3 off 3.3 overs. The Irish battled on to reach 4-9 and 5-13 and finally the middle order hit a few runs and the band of red bearded Leprechauns in the party stand had something to cheer about. We bowled them out for 91 I think, and Haydos and Gilly beat the schizer out of their attack and the whole thing was over by the scheduled 1:00pm lunch break. Welcome to Barbados.

Our place on the south coast's Maxwell Beach was really nice. A little self contained unit at the end of a rocky lane with a pool across the way and the beach a five minute stroll away. We stocked the cupboards with breakfast essentials and the fridge with Mt Gay rum and cola. Friday night was the traditional fish fry up at Oistins, so we caught the Dub Bus down there grabbed a bench and ordered up. Swordfish, Mahi Mahi (or Dolphin, as the Barbadians call it), macaroni pie, Barbadian rice and bottles of Banks Beer. Fabulous stuff and all for small money.

Strolling back from the fry up, we found a few rum shacks on the roadside, so we pulled into one and started drinking with the locals. 300mL bottles of Mt Gay, a bowl of ice and a bottle of cola, three glasses and a Rastaman playing pounding reggae out of a stack of bassbins, all inside a room 5m wide by 2.5m deep. Farkin' orrrrsome! We sipped on a few of those bottles and called it quits. It was only the first day in the Caribbean after all.

We checked out loads of Barbados over the week. It's about 420 square kilometers in all, and takes about 30 minutes to drive clear across it, at the widest point. Places like Holetown, the Soup Bowl at Bathsheba, Rockley and Hastings were all wicked. The locals are the friendliest, nicest and stone coolest people we'd ever met. There was never a hint of unease or feeling that our safety was at risk. The food commonly used a combinaton of spices and chilli that tasted great but paid you back with interest on the porcelain chair. We recommend Barbados highly.

I write all this in Quito, Ecuador, elevation 2900m. With the Cordillera Occidental and Orientale to the West and East respectively and Volcan Pichincha towering over the city at 4800m or thereabouts, it's a city like I've never seen before. We started a week long, four hours per day Spanish class today, which frankly has broken my little head. I had to come here and write something in English to make the synapses fire again. When we've done something more interesting than school, I'll let you know.