Cocoa Beach 28:17.55N 80:39.45W
Lotus
Wed 9 Jun 2010 12:24
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Once again we headed out to sea and up the coast
but only as far as the Fort Pierce inlet where we rejoined the ICW, this
time we intended to spend a day or two on the inside motoring up to Cocoa beach
with an overnight stop at Vero Beach. This ICW is quite intersting to
begin with as there's always something new to see along the banks most notibley
in the form of huge riverside mansions (if your only experience of America was
the ICW then you would assume that the majority of Americans are millionaires),
there was interesting bridlife including Ospreys nesting on channel marker
posts, they screeched their warnings as we motored only yards away, they seemed
to have the same accent as the scottish and lakeland varieties that we've heard
in the past, not the southern drawl that we started to pick up in the local
population. A couple of days brought us up to Cocoa which was a really
pleasant small town with an Irish pub/pizza spot and a few quaint shops.
Our main reason for stopping in Cocoa was for it's close proximmity to Orlando,
we hired a car and headed inland to see 'Shamu Shamu' the main attractiob at
Seaworld , unfortunately Shamu had recently killed one of his trainers by
dragging her underwater and keeping her there until she drowned, this wasn't
during a show but afterwards when the trainer jumped in the pool with the
KILLER whale to give hime a hug , an innocent mistake we were
told, but sounds more like stupidity to us. It's not that we wanted to see
anothetr killing but decided if it was going to happen again we'd best not miss
it. However, beause the killer whale had killed someone, the show that
they put on was not quite as spectacular as we expected, it was still fantastic
to see but none of the trainers where allowed to get in the water with the
whales and won't be able to for the foreseeable future. The dolpin display
was truly spectacuular and included acrobates, high board divers, a trained
vulture and parrots (I know this sounds bizarre) and sommersaulting dolphins and
a sinister looking pilot whale.
Te whole experience at seaworld was woth the
exortonate entrance fee, with hand feeding dolpins, several mega fairground
rides and a vast array of marine species.. It was so good we
had to pay another visit on the Monday.
    The Kennedy Space Centre was our next stop off,
boring (definitely a boy thing as John thought it was great). He found the
full size Saturn rocket most impressive - the least said the
better!
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