The Florida Keys offer a stunning, island-hopping backdrop for a crime drama — and a road trip deep into the Caribbean.
Ed Grenby - 6 August 2024
So Vince Vaughn gets thrown out of the Miami police force, becomes a restaurant hygiene inspector in the Florida Keys, then is dragged into a murder case there when a bunch of tourists accidentally fish up a human arm. That might sound an unlikely plotline for the big-budget, ten-part cop drama Bad Monkey that starts this week on Apple+ – but once you’ve visited the Florida Keys yourself, you realise all the above is strangely plausible.
For a start, the Keys – that long chain of islands and islets that drips off the bottom of the Sunshine State into the Caribbean – have long had a louche, illicit feel, with rum-runners from Jamaica, revolutionaries from Cuba and hippie rebels from the rest of the USA converging here. There are plenty of restaurants to keep an inspector busy, too. (It’s a popular holiday destination for discerning Americans – the tropical paradise they can simply get in their cars and drive to.) And as for that severed arm? All too convincing, I think to myself, as I snorkel past dozing sharks and barracuda in the warm, teeming waters of John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park on Key Largo (pennekamppark.com).
Largo is the first and biggest of the Keys as you drive down from mainland Florida, and – sharks aside – it’s a gentle entry into the idiosyncratically island way of life. Many businesses are still recognisable American chains (you can overnight at a Holiday Inn, if feeling unadventurous). But once beyond that, the vibe begins to change along with the more exotic names – next up, Islamorada and Lower Matecumbe Key – and the McDonald’s gives way to mom-&-pop joints selling fishing tackle, home-caught seafood or, less usefully, winsomely nautical-themed gewgaws made of shells and the like.
Image: Fancy a Dip? A marina restaurant at Islamorada on Lower Matecumbe Key
The “sights” are eccentric oddities, too: Islamorada’s History of Diving Museum (complete with weird waxwork of Aristotle’s “cauldron-on-head” diving bell; divingmuseum.org), or the Turtle Hospital on Marathon (turtlehospital.org). But for most visitors, it’s the driving itself that’s most memorable. Linking all these little landmasses together, and tethering them tenuously to the rest of the US, is the Overseas Highway – a 113-mile ribbon of tarmac, as much bridge as road, that arcs, swoops, soars, skims, loops, and sometimes seems to leap with joie de vivre between the islands.
A vintage-y convertible is the obvious choice for this trip (there are plenty of outfits in Miami and other hopping-off points who’ll rent you one), but by day two of my five-day trip I’m glad of a more modern vehicle. Cruise control and lane detection mean I’m free to focus on sun-tanning my left arm as it rests, all-Americanly, half out the window; on singing along to the radio (the DAB has serendipitously found a station called Road Trip XM); and on choosing which of those many seafood joints I’m going to patronise later.
Spoiler alert – and I really was spoiled – it was Twisted Shrimp, on Plantation Key, which horrified me by not selling beer, but made up for it with endless refills of root beer, a creamily delicious Shrimp and Grits, and an actual old wooden speedboat you can dine in under the stars; twistedshrimps.com.
Image: The 113-mile Overseas Highway links the Keys
I also keep my peepers peeled for the perfect beach. As I head into the Lower Keys, the land peters out into shards and mere sandbanks, but the whole archipelago is punctuated by tiny sandy coves between the mangroves. They’re not big – most are just the right size for a towel or two – but you’ll rarely have to share. If you do want something larger, or livelier, many hotels – from two-room B&Bs to biggish resorts – have decent chunks of beach, plus all the usual pools. Some have not-so-usual pools, too: at Hawks Cay (hawkscay.com) on Duck Key, there’s a lagoon to swim and paddleboard in, and another where you can interact with rescued and unreleasable dolphins. At the very end of the road is Key West, a small city, bustling with boats (and tourists) but still somehow laidback and with a raffish, rum-soaked edge. Here you can visit Truman’s “Little White House” presidential retreat (also favoured by JFK, Clinton and others), go dolphin-watching (honesteco.org is an excellent outfit) and stay for as long as you’ve got before you need to drive back the way you came.
Done straight, you’re only three-hours-odd from Miami, but on my return leg I linger to hire a bike (bikemarathonbikerentals.com) and cycle Old Seven Mile Bridge, a decommissioned and non-motorised section of the Overseas Highway. I lick an ice cream as I pedal, and gaze at the improbably photogenic span above cerulean waters of the new Seven Mile Bridge alongside. The only implausible thing about Bad Monkey, or the Florida Keys, or any of this vacation perfection, is that it exists at all.
For a start, the Keys – that long chain of islands and islets that drips off the bottom of the Sunshine State into the Caribbean – have long had a louche, illicit feel, with rum-runners from Jamaica, revolutionaries from Cuba and hippie rebels from the rest of the USA converging here. There are plenty of restaurants to keep an inspector busy, too. (It’s a popular holiday destination for discerning Americans – the tropical paradise they can simply get in their cars and drive to.) And as for that severed arm? All too convincing, I think to myself, as I snorkel past dozing sharks and barracuda in the warm, teeming waters of John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park on Key Largo (pennekamppark.com).
Largo is the first and biggest of the Keys as you drive down from mainland Florida, and – sharks aside – it’s a gentle entry into the idiosyncratically island way of life. Many businesses are still recognisable American chains (you can overnight at a Holiday Inn, if feeling unadventurous). But once beyond that, the vibe begins to change along with the more exotic names – next up, Islamorada and Lower Matecumbe Key – and the McDonald’s gives way to mom-&-pop joints selling fishing tackle, home-caught seafood or, less usefully, winsomely nautical-themed gewgaws made of shells and the like.
Image: Fancy a Dip? A marina restaurant at Islamorada on Lower Matecumbe Key
The “sights” are eccentric oddities, too: Islamorada’s History of Diving Museum (complete with weird waxwork of Aristotle’s “cauldron-on-head” diving bell; divingmuseum.org), or the Turtle Hospital on Marathon (turtlehospital.org). But for most visitors, it’s the driving itself that’s most memorable. Linking all these little landmasses together, and tethering them tenuously to the rest of the US, is the Overseas Highway – a 113-mile ribbon of tarmac, as much bridge as road, that arcs, swoops, soars, skims, loops, and sometimes seems to leap with joie de vivre between the islands.
A vintage-y convertible is the obvious choice for this trip (there are plenty of outfits in Miami and other hopping-off points who’ll rent you one), but by day two of my five-day trip I’m glad of a more modern vehicle. Cruise control and lane detection mean I’m free to focus on sun-tanning my left arm as it rests, all-Americanly, half out the window; on singing along to the radio (the DAB has serendipitously found a station called Road Trip XM); and on choosing which of those many seafood joints I’m going to patronise later.
Spoiler alert – and I really was spoiled – it was Twisted Shrimp, on Plantation Key, which horrified me by not selling beer, but made up for it with endless refills of root beer, a creamily delicious Shrimp and Grits, and an actual old wooden speedboat you can dine in under the stars; twistedshrimps.com.
Image: The 113-mile Overseas Highway links the Keys
I also keep my peepers peeled for the perfect beach. As I head into the Lower Keys, the land peters out into shards and mere sandbanks, but the whole archipelago is punctuated by tiny sandy coves between the mangroves. They’re not big – most are just the right size for a towel or two – but you’ll rarely have to share. If you do want something larger, or livelier, many hotels – from two-room B&Bs to biggish resorts – have decent chunks of beach, plus all the usual pools. Some have not-so-usual pools, too: at Hawks Cay (hawkscay.com) on Duck Key, there’s a lagoon to swim and paddleboard in, and another where you can interact with rescued and unreleasable dolphins. At the very end of the road is Key West, a small city, bustling with boats (and tourists) but still somehow laidback and with a raffish, rum-soaked edge. Here you can visit Truman’s “Little White House” presidential retreat (also favoured by JFK, Clinton and others), go dolphin-watching (honesteco.org is an excellent outfit) and stay for as long as you’ve got before you need to drive back the way you came.
Done straight, you’re only three-hours-odd from Miami, but on my return leg I linger to hire a bike (bikemarathonbikerentals.com) and cycle Old Seven Mile Bridge, a decommissioned and non-motorised section of the Overseas Highway. I lick an ice cream as I pedal, and gaze at the improbably photogenic span above cerulean waters of the new Seven Mile Bridge alongside. The only implausible thing about Bad Monkey, or the Florida Keys, or any of this vacation perfection, is that it exists at all.