Miami with Carlos

We had an awesome opportunity to travel to Miami on a work trip to visit my favorite client! I have been working with Carlos as his bookkeeper for 3 years. About a year ago I started doing more financial advisory work for his business including cash flow forecasting and debt management. We work together really well, and he eventually hired me to help with his personal finances as well. We talk twice a week- once for personal finance and once for business finance. We have become friends through our weekly chats.

Carlos’ business, a software engineering company called Gistia, has an office in Miami but most employees work remotely. He tries to fly company leadership out to meet in person and help build more of a cohesive culture. A few weeks ago, he told me that he really wanted to figure out a way for me to make the trip out to Miami and said he would pay for my ticket and hotel and that Aaron would be welcome to come. We decided to take him up on it! Claudia and Stephen were nice enough to watch Elliot and Annie for us, which was super convenient with them living with us. We left Friday afternoon and came back on Monday night. 

The trip was awesome. We had a mix of time with Carlos and exploring on our own- all without kids, which was so liberating! Even sitting on the airplane was fun. We were able to play a game of Civilization on the computer and read without having to juggle sippy cups and all that. 

Carlos and his wife were great tour guides that made sure we saw a mixture of the classic touristy spots and the "real" Miami where the locals hang out. They are just awesome people who are so easy to talk to. I loved hanging out with them every evening while we were there.

Dinner at Dr Limon with Carlos and Ale- best Peruvian food I have ever had!

We call my dad "Dade" so we had to take plenty of Dadeland pics

Fancy hotel lobby. Honestly, Aaron and I would have been more comfortable in a less fancy hotel. Breakfast was outrageously expensive, so we walked to the grocery store across the street and had our own cereal stash that we ate out of the cups in the hotel room. #fancypeople

View from our hotel room

Saturday morning was spent at Miami beach. We walked along the beach for a long time and then walked along the streets lining the boardwalk. The weather was absolutely perfect, although we did get a bit sunburned. We wanted to try to walk over to where the cruise ships were docked, but my pregnant body needed too many breaks. 

Just me and my best friend going for a stroll on the beach!

What a neat tree

We found a nice butt. I texted this picture to my family and they immediately identified it as a sculpture by Fernando Botero. Clearly I'm the least artistically inclined one in my family

Getting all windswept on a lovely pier. We got to see a guy jump off the pier right by this no diving sign.

Carlos picked us up in his convertible and gave us a tour of his home turf. We kept on nerdily pointing out how awesome the banyan trees are, so he drove over to this golf course that has a ton of them. It is like they drop vines that turn into roots giving them this awesome twisty droopy vibe. We ate lunch at a delicious cuban restaurant and had a blast just chatting with Carlos. Aaron and Carlos really hit it off, which was fun too. We got to hear all about the future business ventures he has in the works. 

Banyan trees galore

We found a local ward to go on Sunday morning. It was a fast and testimony meeting that was completely bilingual! It seemed like there was a very close to 50/50 split between Spanish and English speakers. They had translation headsets available to everyone as they walked into the chapel. People got up and shared their testimonies in both languages. It was way cool!

Afterwards, Aaron and I ventured out to Everglades National Park. We had asked Carlos if he had recommendations about how to best see the Everglades. He said "on YouTube! There are mosquitoes and alligators, why would you want to go?!?" Well we did want to see some gators so we lathered ourselves in bug spray and made the trek. February was an interesting time to go because it is Florida's dry season. That meant that we didn't actually see any mosquitoes, but some of the plants had their leaves off, and the gators weren't as active. It was still definitely worth the trip. 

Another shout out to my Dade

On the way to the Everglades, we had to stop at Robert Is Here. It was part exotic fruit stand, part petting zoo, part cultural experience. Apparently this guy named Robert started a fruit stand here when he was 6 years old in 1959. Business has boomed, and this place is now a hopping tourist destination. 

Robert himself next to some Guanabana! Aaron and I bought a guanabana milkshake, and it was SO GOOD. I wish we had bought some fresh guanabana to try as well. 

Flavored honey tasting station

The petting zoo. Why not?

We heard that gators were more scarce during the winter, but luckily this huge guy was there right by the entrance to the boardwalk loop we went on!

Lots of lily pads

We were hoping to have a "the floor is alligators" experience. This is the closest we got. 7 alligators just hanging out right by the boardwalk!

These water birds called Anhingas do this goofy thing with their wings to dry them. The trail we went on was called Anhinga trail after the birds. It was definitely the right pick for us in terms of how much we were able to see in a short period of time.

We had some time to kill on Monday morning before our flight home. I found a place where you can kayak in a lagoon that supposedly has manatees in it. It ended up being a major highlight of the trip. 

I love kayaking

We only had to wait 5 minutes for our first manatee spotting! We saw 3 or 4 total (hard to tell if we were seeing new ones or if the same ones were moving around)

Manatees are so chill. The water is murky enough that we could only see them when they come up for air.

Miami beach as seen from our little lagoon

After our hour rental was up, we walked along another nearby beach. They had trails along the beach and also in some foresty areas. I was successful in terrifying Aaron by pretending that I saw an alligator when I was leading the way through a more overgrown part of the trail. I felt a little guilty for almost giving him a heart attack. 

A dead jellyfish!

A baby tree growing out of a coconut!

We got home after everyone had already gone to sleep. We were greeted by this sign on our bedroom door...

And all of Elliot and Annabelle's underwear hung up on our ceiling fan! We about died laughing. Apparently Bree balanced our rocking elephant toy on the bed and stood on it to get the underwear up there. 

Post trip bribery ice cream for these two

We promised the kids that we would take them out for ice cream if they were good while we were gone. Apparently it worked great. Whenever Annie asked where we were, Claudia would tell her that we were on a trip and Annie would say "Mommy and Daddy going on trip to get ice cream for me!" They were plenty distracted by their fun cousins. 

This trip was awesome, and I'm really grateful to Carlos for bringing us out and to Claudia for holding down the fort while we were gone!