Monday, January 28; Florida City, Coral Castle

These last few days of the first month of the new year finds us relishing the warm days of southern Florida.  


We learn from family and friends of the wintry temperatures and frozen precipitation from the coastal North Carolinas to upstate New York and we wonder if Floridians take for granted the azure blue skies, the sound of the breezes rushing through palm tree fronds, and the donning of shorts and flip-flops as every day wear.

We became ‘winter tourists’ when we visited The Coral Castle in Homestead. This remarkable coral sculpture garden was built over the course of twenty-eight years by a Latvian man, Ed Leedskalnin, who was all of five foot tall and barely weighed one hundred pounds, yet he was able to carve this park of coral by hand using primitive tools.  Each section of the wall is eight foot tall, four foot wide and three foot thick; and weighs about 13,000 pounds.  Leedskalnin carved and moved over 1100 tons of coral without human assistance. Thwarted by his fiancé at the altar rail, he was determined to build this structure for his “sweet sixteen”.  She, however, never saw the testament of his will and endurance.

On the North Wall there is the Polaris telescope, which was perfectly focused on the North Star. 

And nearby is a sun dial, the only known of its kind, with engraved numbers from 9 to 4, to indicate the hours that a man should work; all other time was inconsequential to the builder.  

Throughout the grounds are tropical flowers and trees including the Trumpet Flower, Staghorn ferns, bougainvillea of several shades, and we were entertained by colorful African Rainbow lizards, who reside in the coral walls as they are sit-and-wait predators and feed on ants, spiders, beetles, grasshoppers, crickets and katydids. The lizards we saw have a near-smile on their faces and bravely pose for photographers before they skitter away in a nanosecond.