Cruise day 5: one more day in Miami

Friday morning we woke up and grabbed breakfast at the buffet before pulling our own bags off the ship and out into the early morning. We grabbed a taxi with the others to the airport where they were going to pick up a rental and we were going to... we still had no idea. The taxi window advertised that it took cards, but when the time came to the driver let us know that he didn't have his machine. Seriously? We were scrambling for loose change, and not feeling too sorry for him if he didn't end up getting all of his fare. Screw the tip. How can you advertise taking cards... and then not? We told the others good-bye. We were going to go with them and have them drop us off somewhere but we were still undecided so we pulled our suitcases into the airport as they drove away with the taxi man (we'd told him that the others had cards (though we really didn't know) and he was nervous. Mean, yes.). First thought, it's Sean's birthday, let's try to trade our tickets in for an earlier flight. West heads to a line and an airline worker tries to tell him he's in the wrong one. West brushes him off by saying what we're here to do and the man again insists West is in the wrong line. Finally West realizes the man is right. Stupid tourist who doesn't know anything ha ha. At least West can admit that's what he was. We checked on a kiosk for an earlier flight and there was nothing. So now what? It's hard to get around or do anything with bags. We decided to check them to make getting around for the day easier. Same airline man gives us information. This time West listens. It occurs to us that renting a car for the day may be about the same price as checking two bags... and cheaper than checking two bags + taxi fares for a day. So we drug our bags back out and caught a shuttle to a car rental place where renting a car was extremely easy and most certainly cheaper than taxi-ing it all day. They handed us a map, we threw the bags into the trunk, and we hit the road, West navigating, me at the wheel. The first thing that caught our attention was something called "the falls". We headed toward it. "Turn left".... "TURN LEFT"... "I AM... oh wait (fast switching of lanes)". Only to find that "the falls" was a mall, and it wasn't even where the map said. So after that lame discovery we decided to head to something called "Fruit and spice farm". Which of course, was also not on the right place on the map. We drove and searched for two hours. We were in some really nice orchard area though and noticed these two trees, not knowing what they were:
The fruit on this one was spiky:
West trying to follow a map that we were finding to be very incorrect.
We finally started stopping and asking directions, until we stumbled upon it. They had some crazy fruit samples out in their office/gift store, because they don't want you to pick fruit from the trees.
This one, mamey sapote, was one of my favorites:
The snot apple... and it looked even more disgusting in person. It doesn't taste much better either, so they say. This is the only one we didn't try.
Cinnamon apple, and carambola (or star fruit), both very yummy.
Sugar apple and dead man's fingers. The green one is called dead man's fingers because of how they hang and look like... well, dead man's fingers. It tasted a bit like kiwi, though not quite as strong. The sugar apple looks almost as gross as the snot apple (just not as slimy), but was surprisingly very good. Looks are deceiving on that one. Both of these actually.
I can't remember what these are. The green ones were bitter, the pink ones sweet.
My favorite, avocado there on the bottom. We ate Wess's cuban sandwiches (he'd been craving them on Monday when we were bumming around Miami) in their tiny cafe that had just opened that week. It had nine tables in it, and that was all the room could hold. But it was warm and quaint. I sat down and called my parents to check in with them (and I found out that my dad had killed a TARANTULA in my driveway while I was gone! Cue in Cali screaming that it was by her bike. Grandpa tries to kill it with the bike, it grabs onto the bike, cue in Grandpa screaming. He finally got it though). We made sure to text Ashley and rub it in that we were eating Cuban sandwiches and they weren't. We had signed up for a tour to see all the different kinds of fruit trees the farm had, and after lunch had time to kill before the tour started. So we wandered out on our own to see what we could see. This is the biggest fruit I have ever seen in my life!
We found out that one of the trees we had seen while driving around (the first picture of the blog post) is a longan berry tree. They gave us some to try.
There were lizards EVERYWHERE. Swarms of them.
We found some trees full of the huge fruit. Apparently they're called jack fruit. It was a little nerve wracking walking under the tree to get a picture, I didn't want one to fall on me!
It had some pretty funky leaves... or are those flowers?
We saw these trees in Key West and had thought they were cool. Come to find out it's a type of chestnut tree.
But check out the size of it's chestnuts!

I had no idea that bananas had flowers at the ends of them:

It started to rain big fat, heavy drops, so we ran to this tram to wait it out.

It rained:

And rained:

And RAINED:

And then it was done.

We headed back to the office for our tour. She wasn't too keen on going out with it just having rained, and possibly continuing to rain, but I talked her into. No, we can't come back tomorrow.

That cool spiky fruit we saw earlier... a paradise fruit.

It started to rain again, so I'm sure we got the rushed version of the tour, but it was still fun.

This tree is called the strawberry tree because it's blossoms look like strawberry blossoms.

It's berries tasted like cotton candy.

I forgot what this is called, and it's not edible, but it looks amazing just hanging there like that.

We decided to head back to the airport, but not with out a random "hey let's try some key lime pie at that place" stop. It didn't look like much of a place, but it was so good!

We got back to down town Miami faster than we thought we would, so we thought we'd try the unreliable map one more time. "The venetian fountains" caught my attention, and hey, they're close. Well, maybe. It was no surprise when it wasn't where the map said it was. And again no real surprise when, after stopping for directions, we found it was actually a country club type of a complex neighborhood place. BUT, it did have this cool fountain in the middle of a round-a-bout. I lost my flip flop trying to run across to it, cars were flying by so fast and not staying in their lane. It was hard to get my shoe back. West said the whole trip out to it was worth it, just to see me trying to cross to it.

Our flights home were packed with a mob like mentality to get on. Our first flight was actually over booked and they asked for volunteers with no connections in Atlanta to give up their seats for vouchers. West and I wanted to. But we didn't because we had a connecting flight. We secretly hoped we'd miss our connection, as the flight was delayed, so we could check out Atlanta for a night. No such luck. The pilot made up for lost time while in the air and we made our connection with no problems at all. I passed out in a drugged like state on the second flight and a few times I tried to pull myself out of my haze and be present for West, but I just couldn't manage it. We landed safe and sound in Salt Lake at midnight, where Jr. was waiting for me, and Mike for West. Bye babe. When I got home, this greeted me:

And as my parents had my bed I was camping out on the couch so this was also waiting for me: