Greed, Opulance and Palm Beach.
WARNING – HARSH SOCIAL COMMENT TO FOLLOW
Have you seen the movie “All the Money in the World”? That’s the one where J P Getty wouldn’t pay a ransom to the kidnappers of his grandson. I’m not making a call on whether he was right or not but the film ends with a strong message for us all. If you haven’t seen it you should. Then have another look at this blog page. We’ve all heard how the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. Well that never really bothered me until I saw Palm Beach, Florida. I do not begrudge people who legally, morally and ethically made their money but to see the homes of the rich and famous here just rubs it in the noses of those of us just doing what we can to survive and enjoy life.
Shane & I took a ride northward to see more of Florida. Now what you need to know is that for some 350 miles the east coast of Florida is shielded by a narrow strip of land where the eastern side is made up of glorious beaches and the western side is bounded by waterways. The map I have posted below is just 12 – 15 kms of this coastline. This narrow strip of land is home to over 30 Billionaires (c 2014) including the likes of President Trump, Greg Norman, Olivia Newton-John (a condo & a Mansion), Tiger Woods (x 2), Kid Rock, Celine Dion, Robert Allenby, Venus & Serena Williams (separately), Bill Gates, Tommy Lee Jones, Jimmy Buffet, Rosie O’Donnell, Rudy Giuliani, Amy Coulter, Tony Robbins, Billy Joel, Ariana Grande, LeBron James, Pharrell Williams, Shakira, Gloria Estafan, Caroline Wozniacki and so on and so on and so on. (Notice mostly sports people).
What I am posting here is a series of photos taken from the car of Palm Beach. We couldn’t stop to take pics because you just can’t. The road is designed to stop ‘rubber neckers’ (yes, like us) seeing the opulence of these monstrosities they call homes. However you can still see enough from the road to feel nauseous. Even if you had a family of a dozen kids you would still have rooms that you wouldn’t enter in a decade. I’ll leave it to you to think about.
That aside on this trip we visited the Manatee Centre (free admission) but sadly it was out of Manatee season and we dipped out. We saw photos of dozens of manatees congregating in the ‘bay’ where the power station releases warm water during their winter months. 15 minutes later we were on the road again. From here we went to the Loggerhead Turtle Sanctuary where the opposite was the problem. It was definitely Turtle nesting season but for that reason all their turtle watching tours were booked out months ago. Coming from NQ and having seen turtles nesting we decided against waiting 4 hours in the tropical thunderstorms for sunset just to see the same again.
I have included some pics that Shane took of the local shops and a cantilever bridge we got stuck at as a small cruiser went by. By the way, the photo (between the pic of the Manatee skeleton and the Turtle skeleton) of a ship covered by a huge ‘tarp’ is posted for the benefit of my navy mates. It’s hard to judge the scale by a pic but I guarantee you that ship was the size of a frigate. At least 200 feet long! We couldn’t get closer for a clear pic but the boat on the extreme left of pic is at least a 70’ cruiser.
That’s it for today’s social commentary. Watch for more as we switch from our resort to our caravan and start our roadtrip.
Cheers for now,
Garry and Shane