LauderBlog

There are lots of ways to get your kicks this long 4^th of July weekend. Fireworks on the beach. Concerts. Swimming in the ocean. The list goes on. But some of you just might enjoy checking out some very literal kicks too. And punches. The AAU Youth and Adult Taekwondo National Championships are going on right here in Fort Lauderdale. The weeklong tournament at the Broward County Convention Center wraps up over the holiday. If you're a sports fan, or martial arts enthusiast, this will be the place to head for some fun. I may just check it out myself. I have some real personal history with martial arts, including taking both judo and taekwondo lessons for a while when I was a teen. I was the neighborhood smart kid who had been bullied a lot and these classes gave me a new confidence in my ability to stop this problem. I was never bullied again - and luckily, never had to use the training for real.

I've also written a book for kids about martial arts, which I'm glad to say remains in print. And I've interviewed Olympic karate champions too. All of this has provided me with a real appreciation for the discipline, training and plain hard work required to excel in any of the martial arts.

Taekwondo is one of my favorites. It's really just another form of karate that originated in Korea - the Korean word loosely translated means, "way of the foot and fist." For good reason. In this martial art, you learn to defend and attack using primarily your feet and hands, though knees, elbows, arms and other parts come into play often as well. In 2000, that method of self-defense became an Olympic sport. This weekend at the convention center, you'll see some of our nation's best taekwondo athletes in action. It's totally exciting in person, believe me. These folks don't mess around. Wearing helmets and pads, they go full contact with furious punches and flying kicks and roundhouses that can lay each other out cold on the mat. I've actually seen that happen. Whoa. It's serious and it's fast. I really recommend the tournament if you're at all curious about this sort of thing. A very different way to get your kicks over the 4^th. Whatever you do, though, have a great holiday in the Fort Lauderdale area. Should be fun!

The clouds stretched out below me, all silver-blue. Above, the sky was clear and the 737 rumbled down the Atlantic coast of Florida, maybe five miles or so offshore. I was coming home from North Carolina, returning after several days away. And I was ready. I watched out my window as the jet began to bank now. I could feel it in my body, a sharp turn by commercial aircraft standards, and then we were descending into all that silver and into that blue. For a moment, I could see nothing except the pale color in a haze immediately outside the window until the haze opened up abruptly into a dreamscape. There was no horizon, nothing beneath or overhead and nothing distinct either, only a swirl of majestic shape floating out beside me in variations of the very same silvery blue.

The clouds had blended into the sky in a way I'd rarely seen before. If I hadn't known I was flying, I easily could have imagined I was underwater somewhere, within the sea among a sifting fog of sunlight and white sand maybe. It was surreal, like being in a film. And it was beautiful, very beautiful.

It broke apart as abruptly as it had appeared when we dropped below the clouds and I could see clearly the dark blue ocean under me now. It was calm, not a single wave or whitecap visible, undulating gently. The water's surface was textured in a way that resembled the weave in a tightly knit fabric. As the jet approached the runway from the east, we passed almost directly over a ship that was trailing a broad wake - a large commercial fishing boat, as best I could tell. Then I noticed what seemed to be both charter boats and private boats crisscrossing a mile or two from land. The high-rise hotels and condos that line the shore north from Fort Lauderdale felt welcoming to me somehow. I watched them grow larger as the plane steadily neared the coast, losing altitude so that the ocean came closer and then I saw a tanker ship gliding into the channel toward Port Everglades. A thin tan strip of beach rolled away from me, outlining the lovely coast as far as I could see. We passed low over John U. Lloyd State Park, over the palmettos and mangroves, and then over the Intracoastal and the runway was in sight at last and the airport was spread around me and then one hard bump and we were down. I was home.

So we were talking about iguanas. Those strangely appealing, oddly lovable lizards that have made South Florida their new home in recent years. In the previous blog, I was explaining something about my fascination with them. They're prehistoric looking, docile around humans, ultra fast on their feet, remarkable swimmers. Now I want to get into where you are likely to find them if you're visiting Fort Lauderdale. You'll see the little gecko and other smaller lizards without any effort. They're everywhere - on sidewalks, around outdoor bars, in parking lots. Everywhere. But the grand iguana may require a bit of looking, especially if you want to make sure you have your camera ready to snap away when you discover one of these creatures. If you're a tourist here, you really should bring home an iguana photo to prove what an exotic place you've just explored.

For starters, look for iguanas around fresh water. I don't recall seeing these lizards near the ocean in Fort Lauderdale now that I think about it. But I'll often stumble across one or two beside our many rivers or canals. You'll also find iguanas sunning themselves in some field or on a lawn. They're just like any other cold-blooded animal - they need the sun for heat.

More specifically, I have a few suggestions about where to go iguana-watching. If you happen to be on a boat motoring through the Intracoastal Waterway, keep an eye out when you go under the Sunrise Boulevard drawbridge on a sunny day. Normally, you'll float by several of them at this spot. I've often seen iguanas in Colee Hammock Park too, my favorite small park in South Florida. I stop by this place often to watch the boats and clear my head. When I'm there in the afternoon, I frequently see one or two sizable iguanas strolling the sea wall. Just turn south off Las Olas on to SE 15^th Avenue and go straight until the street ends at the park. But to my knowledge, the most reliable iguana location is Birch State Park, which is on the north side of Sunrise Boulevard near A1A. I've found them in large numbers during the hot afternoons, sometimes crowds of iguanas sitting not far inside the park entrance. Taking a Segway tour there is one way to increase your odds of running into iguanas. But you can drive or walk or bike or skate, whatever. If you get around Birch very much, you're almost certain to bump into some iguanas. And so there you have it - two blogs offering a Fort Lauderdale iguana primer. These lizards are only one part of the fauna and flora that help make South Florida so special for visitors. Of course, that's the opinion of someone who just called iguanas "lovable." Take it for what it's worth.

I love iguanas. Not that I would ever own one, of course. Around South Florida, you don't need to own one anyway. They're all over, though for some reason these prehistoric-looking lizards seem to favor particular locations over others for group meetups. Not sure why exactly, unless there's some two-for-one special on hibiscus flowers at their hotspots or something. (Iguanas love to munch on flowers and hibiscus is among their favorites.) So I'm devoting this week's blogs to these odd creatures, explaining why you'll enjoy them if you visit the Fort Lauderdale area and where to find them if you'd like to show the family. Tourists are especially fascinated, understandably enough. Riding the Water Taxi or in some park, I'll often watch visitors race for their cameras whenever they see an iguana lazily sunning itself. Iguanas are one of the many natural attractions around here.  Not native. Distinctly unloved by some residents, especially those with hibiscus! But fairly amazing animals, honestly, if you take a little time to observe them.

Perhaps their personal appeal for me has something to do with my past. When I was a kid, maybe 12-years-old, I learned to do a pretty darned good lizard impression. Give me a martini some day and I'll show you. Heck, I'll show you without the martini. Then like so many kids, I also was completely absorbed by dinosaurs for a while.

Iguanas really do look like they stepped out of Jurassic Park. Stubby legs, long claws, a spiky crown on their head. Weird, frankly. They're among the largest lizards found in South, Central or North America and also are native to such far-flung shores as Fiji in the South Pacific and Madagascar off the African coast. Now they've found a very comfortable home in South Florida, where the subtropical climate and abundant plant life have allowed abandoned pets to breed wildly. You can tell younger iguanas from older ones pretty easily: young ones tend to be bright green and a lot smaller; older iguanas often turn dark green and can grow very large. Very. They like to sit in the midday sun to soak up the rays or just hang somewhere around water - they're gifted swimmers. And man, can they run. When they want to, iguanas raise up on their legs and hit the gas, crossing a field or street so fast they should leave a vapor trail. Right up there with alligators, wild parrots and pelicans these days, iguanas have become one of the must-see Fort Lauderdale critters. Later this week, I'll tell you about a few places to take your camera and grab some lizard snaps for the friends back home. Once you know where to go and when, all you'll need is a fully charged camera battery and a decent zoom for those closeups. These guys are kinda ugly, for sure - but in a very photogenic way.

This seems like a heck of a good deal. And there really is still time to get in on it. I've learned that 17 major Greater Fort Lauderdale museums and attractions are working together this month on a special promotion - something that will save you money and just might enrich your life a bit. How about this for a bargain? You buy a single membership at one of these participating spots and receive a membership to all 16 others for nothing. It's called Broward Attractions and Museums Month and the theme is, "Join One, Experience Them All." I don't know about you, but I sure could stand some relatively inexpensive entertainment among the mix of things to do this summer. We're all looking for a little extra value along with our fun. A 17-for-the-price-of-one promo sounds fairly "extra value" to me.

That's especially true when you look at the list of museums and attractions that are part of it. These include some of my personal faves such as the Bonnet House Museum & Gardens. And the historic Stranahan House along the New River. And Flamingo Gardens in west Broward. All three of these are places I've blogged about and all three are definitely worth a trip.

Another of the collaborating museums and attractions is the IGFA Fishing Hall of Fame, which may sound peculiar to you if you're not a fisherman or fisherwoman. Actually, though, you'll probably have a good time here whether you're seriously into fishing or not - just try out the interactive exhibits for starters. I don't want to turn this blog into a list of everywhere that's taking part in this special offer. Suffice it to say participants also include such highly regarded places as the Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale, the Seminole Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum and the African-American Research Library. For a full list, click here. There are links to the various museum and attraction websites as well as to additional info about the promotion. Broward Attractions and Museums Month has been going on throughout June but, as I said, there's still plenty of time to snap up this deal. As I write this, summer hasn't even officially started. The kids are just out of school, looking for something to do and perhaps not yet totally driving you batty. Maybe day trips to 17 local hot spots will help you make sure that, this summer for a change, they never quite push you over the edge.

Butterflies and piano keys don't seem to go together somehow. In the Fort Lauderdale area, they do. I learned this over the weekend when I returned to Butterfly World for another visit. It's been a while since my last trip to this fairyland attraction, a place where some of the most fragile and beautiful creatures on the planet float around you as if in a lovely dream. I found myself using the word "magical" as Gwendolyn and I wandered through the centerpiece of Butterfly World - the Paradise Adventure Aviary. This is the home for thousands of butterflies of all colors and sizes, from all over the world.  There's also a new feature since I was here last: hummingbirds now live in this same aviary, flitting and darting right along with the butterflies.

But it was on our way into Paradise Adventure Aviary that I found out about the piano keys. At the entrance, a worker was emptying small containers, each holding a single butterfly that had emerged that day from a chrysalis. There must have been 30 of the plastic jars, which the man opened and shook to release the butterfly.

These were small butterflies in a variety of colors but each with a row of distinct white markings along its wings. Markings that looked like, yep, piano keys. "They're called ‘piano key butterflies,'" the worker explained. "The owner bred them here. This is the only place on earth where you'll find piano key butterflies." Fascinating. We watched as these newborn butterflies emerged into their world for the first time. Think about it. At first, they were only caterpillars chomping on leaves inside a Butterfly World lab. Then each turned itself into a chrysalis and, after a few weeks, climbed out of this safe shell into ... a plastic jar. To them, I suppose, this must have seemed like the entire universe for a few hours. I could imagine them feeling something like, "Well, sure, my new place is small. But I can make it work." And then the next thing they knew - freedom. A protected freedom, with more than enough space and more than enough food and lots and lots of playmates. Not a bad life for a butterfly, I should think. For them, it's a moist, leafy, plentiful world to live out their days. For us, it's something else. "Magical" really is the best word for it.