Picking up my footprints...Florida 2016

Cali said goodbye to us with warm coffee and tasty croissants at Alfonso Bonilla Aragon Airport in Cali, with slow pace and friendly people no crowds. 

Miami received us with a tornado that swept over the coastal water and raised water spouts up in the air but we had no visibility traveling North from the Airport with Pippe and Leo, driving on eight-lane interstate highway  in high winds, pouring rain and electrical storm, Heavy traffic and tornado warnings coming through on my emergency calls only Colombian pre-paid cheapo phone. "Seek shelter immediately you are in great danger tornado in your area" can make you a little nervous under those circumstances with no place to run no place to hide.....

I held Hanski's hand hard and thought that if this was our last moment on this Earth at least we we're together and went out (up?) in style.

Obviously, we made it to Lake Worth alive, thanks to Leo's good driving and steady nerves. After settling in at an empty apartment at the same building where my ex-sister-in-law lives we went to rent a car from a rental agency on Dixie. We had booked a car in advance and figured it safer since it was Easter week and lots of tourists in town, but at the same time, were unable to take advantage of any special offers they had and ended up paying through the nose for a car that was not great and the employee forgot to give us a GPS. Which was partly because of our inexperience; we had booked a GPS and even took an insurance, but then forgot to check out if we actually had it.

Next day, we filled up with gas and navigating with my googlemaps on the pad (Galaxy Notepad) we headed first north, on I-95 and the west, across the peninsula towards Tampa and Clearwater. We drove through orange groves and cattle farms, small towns and got us to Tampa without any problem worth mentioning. Finding the area in South Tampa where Hanski's niece lived wasn't too hard either. We had a lovely "fika", an afternoon coffee with cake and ice-cream with Maria and her children, pre-teen boy and a little younger girl, both lively and talented.

Their father, an African-American Army Psychologist was working away from home. We left the happy family early in the evening and steered to Clearwater , over a long bridge. After  taking some wrong turns (my navigator was always like a step behind and then couldn't recognize between two parallell roads) we did find the gated community where my long-time friend Maria Piedad lived with her new husband. We spent a memorable evening , ate a good dinner and slept over. Beautiful Maria Piedad as always, we talked along time about our friend Liliana who had passed away just a couple of months away and whose grave I had visited a week earlier in Cali. Long time ago we all had been young women in Cali, starting out our lives as wives, mothers, homemakers and professionals, studied together to preschool teachers. Liliana had even visited me in Sweden. Friendships that endure the whole life.

Next morning we drove back from Clearwater and Tampa, pushing on because I had promised to be at my niece's egg-hunting Easter party . We were pretty tired, though, and didn't stay late.
***
West Palm Beach revisited, after all those years, was nice. The downtown are was prettied up with a huge outdoors shopping and restaurant area where palm trees blinked with colorful lights and families with children strolled around water fountains and ice-cream shops. We drove there the next day, did the obligatory drive-by sight-seeing tour to Palm Beach to see the mansions of the rich people, photographed Mar-A-Lago without even getting out of the car and finished the evening tour with some lovely ice-cream in Lake Worth.