5....4....3....2....1.....Blogfans......WE HAVE LIFT OFF!!!!!

its been a 17 day break since we left you with promises of Uncle Sam and Themepark's galore....well the wait is over and have we got some stories to tell you, especially about a certain space shuttle launch, but more of that later!

So we left you in Tulum on the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula, and we followed the American tourist trap through to Playa Del Carmen where we landed ourselves a very plush apartment right in the centre of town using all of our traveller's experience to get it for next to nothing!! We spent most of our time chilling out on the golden sands conserving energy for the upcoming road trip. Our days were long and most of our time was spent by Jen teaching me the ways of the various types of Starbucks coffee!!

We were then on our way to Cancun airport on a wave of different emotions, we were leaving Latin America after the best five months of our lives, so many memories of the people and places we have met and seen and also the excitement about getting back into the developed world!

Our original flight was cancelled for some reason but after our hour delay we landed in Miami and headed to our hostel right in the middle of Miami's South Beach. After registering and paying more for one nights accommodation than a week in Guatemala we formulated our strategy for the next three weeks, i.e. we are so over staying in hostels and dormatories, get us into the budget motels with nice beds, TVs and clean towels!!!

Our first night brought no sleep due to the horrific sounds of our fellow German and Irish dorm buddies. Now we have been in quite a few dormatories on our travels, but neither of us have EVER heard snoring like it!! If one was ever tempted to rape a pig, i'm sure the noise would not be too dissimilar!

Miami brought us our last little bit of sunshine, when you see us in a few weeks, we will probably be pasty and white, but believe us when we say we were tropically brown when we landed in Miami!

Being lovers of American Football, we were delighted to hear that our arrival in Miami heralded the commencement of Super Bowl week in, yes you guessed it, Miami Florida! If we actually cared about this stupid sport, we might have been tempted by the five fold increase in hotel rates to stay in Miami and soak up the atmosphere. Instead, not being grabbed by the 'sport that was created for adverts', we only stayed for two nights and then hired our beautiful new car and headed south and west to the Everglades!!

Now for some car stats for car stat fans:

Its a Chevrolet Impala.

And thats where our knowledge ends.

No, seriously, its silver and is very, very fast. No one beats us off the lights!

For car music fans our Walmart sponsored playlist is:

Vampire Weekend. Them Crooked Vultures (thanks for the tip Greg!!!). Britney Spears. And the Top Gun album. A fine choice of music i'm sure you'll agree!!

Having seen the last of the dormatories cos they frankly they maybe cheap, but they also stink, we checked into our roadside Red Roof Inn near the Everglades ready for our gator hunting the next day.......this was after escaping Miami on two wheels after I underestimated the Chevvy's power and also driving the wrong way down a three lane highway!!!!

Our gator hunting in the Everglades went well, well kinda, I think our rabbits were bigger than those gators, but sitting on an airboat is a great experience! It feels like you're flying over the water and pulling those doughnuts is AMAZING!!

We then headed to the Florida Keys over the overseas highway that spans the towns that are built on coral which made for some great driving for Jen and she guided us towards Key West! Key West was a beautiful town and we saw the southernmost point in the USA, but I think we were scared off by paying $119 for the cheapest hotel in town!!

Next on the hit list was Tampa, ready for Busch Gardens and the space shuttle launch......

Busch Gardens has officially been voted our favourite themepark, it was fantastic! We had to queue for no rides all day, in fact we had to stop going on the Montu ride having gone on 8 rides in one hour, we were almost sick (just like the kid in the Disneyland queue for the Toy Story ride, it was brilliant, he was actually sick with excitement with his Dad putting his hand over his mouth to stop more sick escaping, it was very very very hard not to laugh, so we couldn't!!!)

Back to Busch Gardens, the three rides there are outstanding and the wildlife they have there, like the white tiger that jumped at the glass at a punter, the lion that tried to attack the hyena, albeit through two panes of glass, and the hippo that ran along its pen to chase its trainer, is fantastic!

Now, what you need after nine hours running round a themepark is a two hour drive over to the coast of Florida to see a 4:39am space shuttle launch!!

So we arrived in the town of Titusville, which sits directly 12 miles opposite the Kennedy Space Centre, at 11pm, a full five and a half hours before the launch time. 500,000 people were forecast to arrive on this coast line to see the last night time space shuttle launch as the space shuttle is going to be retired in five missions time. After getting a bit of car sleep and then some McDonald's coffee we grabbed our place on the pier to wait for the launch......but it got cloudy, and very very cold and finally the news came through at 4:29am that the launch was scrubbed for 24 hours!

After more car sleep (no hotel tonight) we did manage to grab a hotel room at 10am and slept right through the day and did it all again at 4:14am on Monday morning......

Words cannot describe what we saw at 4:14am, but ill try!

No doubt all of you will ask what our highlight of our trip has been, well, up to this point it was neck and neck with the Inca Trail and the Galapagos visit, but this space shuttle launch beats all that, and probably everything else either of us have ever seen!

At 4:14am the pitch black sky lit up like it was midday as the shuttle went from 0 to 17,500mph in eight minutes. The shuttle curved off to the left and zoomed off into space like a shooting star. We have wanted all of you to see the things we have since September, but this was the moment we wanted all of you with us to see this, it was absolutely amazing, emotional and unbelievably fantastic!!!

High on our space drug, later that day we hit the Kennedy Space centre to check out their rockets and space simulators and pretended to be astronauts! After all that excitement, surely we couldn't take any more, well, actually, we could, it was time for two days at Disney World!!!!

Two days, four themeparks, two travellers, one Disney World!!! Safe to say we nailed these parks, our park hoppers were seriously abused as we did every ride we liked as many times as possible! The poor little kids didn't stand a chance, we literally pushed kids aside on our stampede to the rides and shows! The Tower of Terror and Aerosmith's Rock N Rollercoaster are ridiculously good but the most popular show was American Idol at the Hollywood Studios. The contestants actually thought they were on the real thing!

So now we are in Charleston, South Carolina, and you join us at an historic time, as we speak, every state in the USA, apart from Hawaii has snowfall! There is three inches of it outside our door, and this is in Charleston, officially a sub-tropical climate! The weather forecasters don't know the last time every state had snowfall as it hasn't happened since records began!!!

Who knows where we will be driving tomorrow, but Blogfans, you'll be first to know!!

Till next time....xxxxxx

P.S. Sorry Greg, I had to have my haircut today, I was actually beginning to talk like Shaggy from Scooby Doo! Today is a day of mourning for the hair I left behind.