Day 14 16/1/2017 Port Canaveral

Immigration into the USA was the now familiar 5 hour event with lots of herding and queuing for face to face interview, with complimentary orange juice and water, and grumpy passengers all around.  In the course of this miserable experience, we  met another Alan Carr, senior restaurant manager, who was doubling up as knight in shining armour and recognising who needs to go first, who has mobility needs and who needs to get through to eat before they get hypoglycaemic.   Good on him, he does make a difference.  Our idea was to take it easy this morning and then go our for our excursion in a leisurely way in the afternoon.  It didn't go to plan but it was all right in the end.

This afternoon we went on a Wildlife Pontoon delayed by an hour because of immigration and nearly missed because the message about where to meet hadn't got through to us. In fact missed by a minute and recalled just for us!  The trip was wonderful.  The guide was like an ageing hippy who had spent her life just studying the wildlife, and developing pride of her state and its position in the space race through the 1960's 70's and 80's.  She described herself as a native with a passion for her country.  Khachik thought she must be a scientist.  She had sample box jellyfish and bones and shell remains of some of the lagoon life.  We learned a new word - "brackish" not sure of the spelling but its the water mixture when sea water and fresh water meet, and apparently gives the fish a particularly good flavour.

On this wonderful trip we came across cormorants. eaglets, herons, storks and cranes (same species different plumage), curlews aka ibis, pelicans, osprey, 2 x mannatees (aka sea cows), dolphins - several, at last!