Georgia on my mind

From smoking mountains we get deeper into the south as we drive along roads of lush tropical trees into Georgia. We are now within the humid realm of the southern states giving you about 2 minutes with the air conditioning switched off before that close clammy atmosphere seeps into the car.
Before we get into Georgia we pass through the southern Virginia city of Charleston. This steamy settlement is sprawling and has the feeling of Brazil. There's plenty of attractive buildings around the French Quarter but mainly the housing consists of tired shacks surrounded by overgrown vegetation. The contrast along the same road is startling. We can't seem to find a centre to it and end up riding around block after block of residential streets.
The tropical theme continues over the bridge and the large sea inlet into Georgia. We stop at a rest stop to cook some food and can't believe the heat outside of the car. It seems like we've almost been in a perpetual, but fairly dry, winter in America so this extreme heat will take some acclimatising.


Savannah is a true southern town. Hot, clammy, French architecture and plenty of shaded squares. We stroll along baking streets next to red brick buildings such as the cotton trading one below. This was once the second busiest in the world and it's no surprise as cotton and slaves were in abundance at the time.


The majority of the population here are descended from those African slaves. We walk to the waterfront through a whisping tree filled park.


The waterfront int Savannah look better on photos than it really was. Old warehouses have been renovated into dull shops or restaurants and look decent enough but if you could smell this place, blimey it's bad. Luckily, in a way, I had one of my first colds of the entire trip and a blocked nose saved me from the stench of Savannah, until I blew it that was. I spot the biggest cockroach I have ever seen meandering along the waterfront and imagined many more where that came from. The smell of rotten and warm sewers is a bit of a put off but the majority of Savannah is attractive.

We sit for a while in the leafy square on which Forrest Gump awaits his bus in the film. It's a rare thing when a city in this country offers soo many opportunities for people to sit and relax in picturesque squares. In this heat it's a real bonus!
There's a strange feeling as we get back into the car and head even further south from the old French colonies of Georgia into the old Spanish colonies of the last state we'll visit in America, Florida. The ideas had run dry and going to somewhere like New Orleans or deep into Texas or Alabama would take a serious amount of miles and time. I always considered entering Florida would be a signal that the whole trip was coming to it's end. But that doesn't mean there isn't plenty left to see.