It was a six-hour ride from Seville to Madrid, during the trip we saw immense olive groves and we realized again that Spain is a world power in olive oil production. We arrived safely in Madrid and spent a night there in a cheap hostel, in company of many immigrants. Our flight was to depart from Terminal 4 of the Barajas Airport. We were expecting to meet some trouble, it’s a huge airport and it takes quite some time to get to the terminal, so it’s better to get organized... We were quite afraid of missing the flight (fortunately we had found some pretty cheap flights to Miami) or just screwing something up—we were first-time flyers—at the last checkpoint the qualified officers were looking for the biometric chip in our passports for more than ten minutes.
Well, I think the take-off and landing are still queer, but it’s even queerer that you can fly in a metal tube in 70 degrees below zero, with 600 miles an hour, at thirty-thousand feet high. I rather trust bicycles.
At the U.S.A. border they asked us some questions (some German tourists passed by without being questioned), but I believe we gave the right answers so we were allowed to enter. Miami is huge, very huge.
We took-off at noon and landed at half past two, so we spent more than nine hours above the ocean, the time-zone difference is six hours. In Miami the first thing we did was look for a cheap accommodation, that’s how we ended up in Miami Beach, but due to various calamities finally we settled down on the beach itself, trying to get some sleep in our sleeping bags. At midnight a tropical shower forced us to leave, and we got a room for the following night.
We spent the whole next day looking for new tents, new mats and clothes, and getting the hang of the U.S.A. We had our first bites of the American food as well. Everything’s different, yet everything is almost the same as in Europe. There are people of every variety, and they are informal and direct, both young and old. It’s really common to find yourself having a conversation with someone on the bus or on the streets. We haven’t seen much of nature yet, but the flora and fauna is fully tropical. There are coconut palms and other—unknown but clearly—tropical plants in gardens and parks. We saw iguanas and some interesting birds as well. There are sea turtle nests on the beach, and they are seriously protected. It’s hot, really hot during the day and 80 degrees by night, or when the cool-lukewarm rain begins to fall. The air is always humid.
In the afternoon we headed to the Pace Park to meet those who were interested in our mission. Even though we hadn’t have too much time to organize the meeting and we totally lacked information about Miami and organizations in Miami, there were curious and helpful folks there. They came from the First Hungarian United Church of Christ of Miami, the Miami Kossuth Club. We had a really nice and pleasant afternoon chatting with them. They shared some Hungarian bread, milk-bread and sausage with us, too. Yummy... Thank you very much for everything.
In the evening of the second afternoon we had a walk on the beach. It started to rain again, it was a three-hour long heavy electric storm, with pouring rain. We took shelter from the water at a small lodge, with three other guys. They were looking forward to begin a thousand mile long bike trip in the U.S. The rain didn’t want to stop and we didn’t feel like coming out of our shelter. Finally, one of the biker guys gathered his courage to go to a small store and bought some black garbage sacks to cover their stuff. We made some rain-ponchos from the sacks to protect ourselves. Good company, good times again. But tomorrow we’ll explore the first stage in America.
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