As the title suggests, I'm back from my visit to the USA. Freshly sunburnt and a bit lighter than when I left. The diving was great and the target shooting fun.

This is not so much what I did as what I learnt. There are many similarities between the UK and the US, but a lot of differences too, many so small you don't realise until you experience them.

I flew in to Miami on 9th Feb with my three friends, landing in approx 25'C of sunshine and cloudless skies. This in itself was different. I left freezing temperatures and had to de-ice my car to get to the airport. Having gotten through Immigration and been allowed in we met our fifth friend and loaded up the car. People carrier sized car. What is that, RV or SUV or station wagon? The US has big cars. I mean REALLY big cars. I never knew cars could get so big. We have cargo vans in the UK that are smaller then some US family cars. I drive the UK version of a Ford Taurus and that's considered a big car here. So we drove down to Marathon in the Florida Keys pootling along around 65 or so. I say pootling because I will normally cruise at 90 on a motorway, going to 110 if I need to get around someone. The driver of the group passed three cars inside a minute and reckoned that was heavy traffic.

Enough about cars already. We got to the dive-shack and dumped our stuff. Then it was beer time. The best bit, the bars don't close at 11pm. You leave a tip for the bar person. No-one ever does that in UK bars. We get back and switch on TV, it has more than five channels. Now it's crash out time as we're five hours ahead and to us it's late. Diving in the morning and we need to sleep.


More will follow...

Beasty