Friday 27th February
We were up shortly after daylight and I could not wait to get out of the hostel. It's by far the worst place I have ever stayed in all my life but still glad we stayed other wise we would not of gone to Key West. Although the road there is only a single carriage way with road works and traffic jams at all the different Keys it was deffintately worth doing. It was hard to keep your eyes on the road. When I went to load the bike I realised I had left the helmets locked to the bike during the night and it had rained so we both had to suffer soggy helmets.
We were on the road by 8:00 and heading north. It was over cast but still warm very comfortable though. We reached the dolphin research centre at about 9:30 and paid for the "dolphin dip" we had to wait till 11:00 but we weren't in any rush now we were out of the hostel so we were happy to wait. I was very dubious about doing this as it felt very over priced but glad we did it. Took my go pro in with me so will try and post some video up. Although the little video at Daytona beach I posted on FB took several attempts and over 2 hours to upload. I also took lots of video of US1 the route to Key West and will try and edit and upload some of that to. Shortly after Key Largo we headed up through Florida City on highway 997 and turned left through the Everglades and road up to the Big cypress national reserve in search of somewhere to stay for the night. As the wifi was poor at the hostel we had not been able to get any info on motels in the area so we thought we would just see what we could get when we got there. That was not the best of plans as we and many other weary travellers found out. We were now paying the price for our stupidity and all our savings so far from couch surfing were lost in one night at an over priced dump of a motel.
Saturday 28th February
Ok so enough whinging about being ripped off in the Everglades we were not alone, there were many Americans I over heard complaining about the over pricing in the Everglades. We had the bike loaded and were ready to leave and thought we would just check our emails in the wifi / breakfast area of the motel. While loading the bike I noticed that the water pump or head gasket has been weeping so will have to keep an eye on that.
We headed off to meet Marta and Gyuri in St Petersberg our second couch surfing experience. What a great ride that was through the Everglades playing spot the gator, it felt like riding through Jurassic park on a Tarmac time machine, the road through the Everglades was like every road we have encountered so far straight as and arrow but the side show was dangerously distracting. Although the road through the swamp was unnatural the wildlife beside it was real and was very very distracting.
A while after leaving the Everglades we had to stop and get the water proofs out. It was not cold but it was starting to rain and Gyuri had told us it had been raining all day in St Petersburg, which is where we were heading.
We arrived at Gyuri and Marta's home at about 1600hrs and we were made to feel very welcome, it was more like turning up at a friends place than at a complete strangers. We all were up quite late eating pizza, drinking beer, wine and chatting. Gyuri and Marta are seasoned travellers and used couch surfing many times and have had many good and some bad experiences and were able to give us several pointers on what to look out for when searching for a place to stay.

Sunday 1st March
As it was raining when we arrived at St Petersburg we decided that after finding a laundrette we would head out over the toll bridge and take some pictures. The laundrette turned out be an experience in its self. While we were waiting for our clothes to wash a member of staff arrived and was greeted by her colleagues with happy birthday but she then expected everyone including us to sing happy birthday to her.
After the ride across the toll bridge we rode around St Petersburg for a bit, took a stroll around a Salvador Dalli exhibition. We then decided to cool off by taking a swim, the water was not very warm so it was more of a quick dip. Early evening we went out for a short walk and a drink with Marta and Gyuri, we spent another very pleasant evening with our Marta and Gyuri sitting in there garden by the lake eating drinking and chatting,