We started this one the same way we start a lot of our trips these days, via Dublin, clearing immigration before we'd even left, then on via Charlotte down to Miami. In hindsight, if we were doing it again, we'd skip Miami altogether, more on that later.
We spent our first three nights in Coral Gables, just the two of us, staying at the Thesis Hotel, part of the Hilton group, with a rooftop pool that made for a lovely, quiet start to the holiday.
Our car rental had a few adventures of its own. We'd booked a pickup truck, having loved driving one on a previous US trip, but arrived to find only tiny Jeep Rebels available, no good with two people's worth of wet dive gear to carry. We were upgraded to an electric Silverado, which sounded great until we realised it hadn't come with a charging cable, so by the time we checked out of the Thesis we had to head back to the rental desk to sort it. We came away with a petrol Dodge Ram instead, which turned out to be everything we wanted, if a serious workout for someone five foot two with no side step to climb up into it.
From Coral Gables we drove up to Jupiter, stopping to stock up on groceries en route, and settled into a beautiful three bedroom VRBO with an open plan kitchen and lounge, a big sofa, a pool and hot tub, a mini golf area, and even a little tiki hut with bar stools. Despite the Florida humidity, we barely got a single mosquito bite the whole trip, easily the most pleasant surprise of the stay.
Our friends Will and Bambi joined us on the Sunday, flying into an airport much closer to Jupiter and driving the rest of the way, which taught us for next time, fly closer to the dive sites rather than routing everything through Miami.
The diving itself was the heart of the trip. We booked a private guide for the week with Jupiter Dive Center, running two tank boat dives out to the local sites. The undoubted highlight was a dive on a wreck called SG111, where we came across twenty-seven Goliath groupers, absolutely enormous fish, some three metres long and half a metre wide, hovering above the sand as they began to gather ahead of a full moon spawning event. When they feel intimidated, they can produce a strange guttural growl you actually feel as a vibration in your own chest, though thankfully none of them got that agitated with us nearby.
With a storm rolling in and the sea forecast to build to five, then six to eight foot waves over the following days, we made the call to finish our diving a day early rather than risk getting battered climbing back up a moving boat ladder in rough seas. It meant pausing just three dives short of my five hundredth, a milestone I'm saving now for a trip that does it justice.
On our last full day, we were up at five to walk the beach at dawn with one of Bambi's old colleagues who now lives locally, hoping to spot nesting sea turtles. We found plenty of tracks, and Will and Bambi caught sight of hatchlings making their dash for the sea, while we watched a lightning storm roll in over the horizon during a beautiful sunrise. Afterwards we visited a local turtle rescue centre, seeing rehabilitating turtles alongside resident nurse sharks, a lovely reminder of why care around wildlife in the water matters.
Our last few days were pure relaxation by the pool before the long journey home, again via Charlotte and Dublin. An early arrival into Dublin meant a dash to catch an earlier connecting flight home than planned, worth every bit of the sprint through security to get back home in time to collect our dogs the same day rather than leaving them in kennels overnight.