What’s the Buzz in South Florida? : To Miami

Marco the macaw, a former Miami show bird, preens his shining turquoise feathers in retirement now. Aged 63, he is the oldest of a large and vividly colored flock of tropical avians sharing one of southern Florida’s oddest, most appealing tourist lures: Miami’s venerable Parrot Jungle. Marco’s palm-shaded perch, where he is joined by a dozen of his old buddies, is dubbed the “Senior Psittacine Village.”

I’m not often tempted by the sometimes tacky commercial attractions with which Florida abounds. But I was on the trail of exotic Miami, and I couldn’t hope to find anything much more offbeat than a lush jungle park full of hundreds of parrots, macaws, cockatoos, flamingos, toucans and parakeets.

Many of them were uncaged, flying freely overhead, shrieking and cooing in an unworldly raucous chatter. The Parrot Jungle was an important stop on my self-guided, idiosyncratic tour into Miami, theintriguingly strange. This city is very, very different, I was beginning to learn, but it also was proving to be a lot of fun. After all, the pursuit of fun always has been the city’s primary marketable product.

In a sense, my plan was to explore the Miami area almost as if it were a foreign city on American soil--as in many ways it is.

The setting is tropical Caribbean, a resort community sun-splashed and washed by a warm sea. A large influx of Cuban exiles has added a distinctive Latin flavor. And the exuberant optimism of boom times past and maybe future has bequeathed it an eclectic array of architectural styles, from the sublime to the outrageous.

Miami is a young city with a youthful outlook and a creative flair that has given it a unique style--a sort of flamboyant elegance in tropical dress. European photographers are flocking to town to use it as a backdrop for their fashion layouts.

The buzzword in Miami is “buzz.” There’s a buzz to the city and its suburbs, a pulsating excitement that even a tourist picks up on quickly. Forget those out-of-date forecasts of Miami’s imminent demise. The city is very much alive and lively.

I stayed across Biscayne Bay in Miami Beach, in the new and authentically chic Art Deco Historic District. A handsome, though somewhat frayed, beach-front neighborhood of restored little hotels and innovative cafes, it seems primarily to have captured the imagination of sophisticated travelers from Europe and Latin America.

About 800 Art Deco structures are clustered in a few square blocks at the southern end of Miami Beach, forming an amazing and mostly pastel-shaded ensemble that in my mind fully qualifies as exotic. From this appropriate base, I ventured forth to other Miami exotica, old and new--the sort of places and things you find only in the Miami area. My tour--exotica, mind you, not erotica--was a perfectly respectable one and entirely suitable for families.

Along the way, I hiked through a damp and shadowy rain forest at the Fairchild Tropical Garden, the largest tropical botanical garden in the continental United States. I strolled along Flagler Street, downtown Miami’s principal shopping street. Catering to South American tourists, the narrow thoroughfare looks entirely like a bustling street in an old South American capital. I bought a donkey pinata in Little Havana, a very Latin neighborhood that has become home to many of the Cuban exiles.

And still there was more to explore. I watched sleeping little koalas at Metrozoo; relaxed over tea and fruit pastries in Coconut Grove, a funky, flower-draped village on Biscayne Bay; gawked at the stunning but oddly shaped skyscrapers soaring above Brickell Avenue, Miami’s posh financial district, and cooled off with a swim in the Venetian Pool, an incredible rock-ringed public plunge in luxurious Coral Gables. Conceived as a Venetian fantasy with an arching stone bridge, deep-blue swim-in caves and tumbling waterfalls, the pool is among the most beautiful--and unusual--in the country.

Long one of America’s premier playgrounds, the Miami area took a nose dive as a dream destination a decade ago when almost simultaneously it was hit by racial disturbances and a massive influx of Cuban exiles--tens of thousands of them--that all but overwhelmed city services. Illicit drugs flourished and a violent crime wave erupted. Prosperous winter vacationers opted for the Caribbean, which already had become a major competitor for the tourist trade with the advent of jet travel.

But in the intervening years, Miami has bounced back, due at least in part to intriguing portraits of the city as displayed in the popular “Miami Vice” TV show. New office construction transformed the downtown skyline in the ‘80s as Miami assumed the role of commercial capital of the Caribbean and South America.

The Cubans were absorbed, adding economic vitality to southern Florida, and racial tensions eased. Crime does remain a presence, but probably no more so than in most other big cities. Tourists have returned by the millions, although they are a different breed from those of two decades ago.

A temporary exhibit on tourism, called “Tropical Dreams,” in Miami’s Historical Museum of Southern Florida, explained: “From 1972 to the present, Dade County’s typical tourists drifted from middle class Americans to Latin Americans, students and Europeans--especially those from West Germany and Great Britain.” So prevalent are foreign voices--predominantly young voices--in the Art Deco Historic District, that you figure the sea out there surely must be the Mediterranean.

I count the cosmopolitan mix as yet one more point in Miami’s favor. At night, well-dressed crowds of foreign tourists spill from the Art Deco hotels to promenade along Ocean Drive and visit its outdoor cafes and bars. The center of activity is a bustling, eight-block stretch of the drive, where the cafes face the sea across a wide beach dotted with coconut palms. The air is sultry and the setting tropical.

The scene reminded me of Rio de Janeiro and the fashionable Copacabana Beach at its best, 25 years ago.

I stayed on Ocean Drive in the peach-colored Cavalier Hotel, a three-story, 44-room Art Deco gem nestled in the midst of this romantic scene. Each night I sat at a different sidewalk cafe watching the crowds pass by and dining on extraordinarily good food. The passers-by provided much of the evening’s entertainment. One night, a dozen young fashion models gathered for drinks at the next table, each dressed in the sort of designer garb you see only in magazines.

On another night, it was the menu--not the name--that attracted me to the Stars and Stripes Cafe in the Betsy Ross Hotel, another new Art Deco lodging. The restaurant features fine, fairly expensive American cuisine, but with a decidedly ethnic accent, nicely reflecting the nation’s mix of cultures. I ordered what the menu described as “rhum-and-pepper-painted blackened grouper with plantains on a mango Chardonnay puree.”

Dessert was equally exotic: Havana bananas--a tasty concoction of rum, chilies, chocolate sauce and vanilla bean ice cream. Dinner for one with two glasses of house wine and tip came to about $48.

The array of Art Deco structures so impressed me that I joined a 90-minute walking tour of the Historic District, which is offered every Saturday at 10:30 a.m. by the Miami Design Preservation League (305-672-1836). Founded in 1976, the organization has battled to save and restore the neighborhood.

Not quite half of the structures--mostly built between 1923 and 1943--have been refurbished. Individually delightful, together they form a sort of futuristic world of orange blossom make-believe. Mostly three and four stories tall, they are a contrast to the concrete wall of high-rise hotels and condominiums at the northern end of the island.

The clean, precise look of Art Deco glorified the machine age in an era when new technology dazzled the world. But on Miami Beach, new construction coincided with the Depression, so most of the buildings were of modest stature and were aimed at winter visitors on a budget.

Still, fine decorative touches such as etched glass and fancy wrought-iron trim were added. Unfortunately, the area went into decay after World War II--abandoned to the poor and the elderly--while the Fontainebleau and other high-rise resort hotels just up the beach caught the tourist fancy for a time.

Much of the Art Deco District remains scruffy, and a number of buildings are still boarded up, awaiting their fate. Older residents gather in lounge chairs outside faded apartment buildings, quietly observing the changes occurring around them.

The Miami area is sprawling, and about the only way you can get around easily is by car. My sightseeing excursions took me west from Miami Beach across Biscayne Bay to downtown Miami, then south and west through some of the area’s fanciest neighborhoods. With a map in hand, I had no trouble finding my way.

My first stop was downtown Miami, which has undergone considerable revitalization. Facing Biscayne Bay is the Bayside Marketplace, a new upscale shopping pavilion with lots of ethnic food stalls overlooking a yacht marina.

Miami apparently is the place to be if you are a wealthy South American on a shopping spree. City officials estimate that during July alone, some 100,000 Brazilians flew into town, and a large percentage of them headed directly for Flagler. For a half-dozen shady blocks or so, the sidewalks of the narrow old street teem with Latin Americans buying stereos, radios, portable TVs, computers and similar merchandise available at much cheaper prices than at home. Dozens of jewelry stores also are clustered in the area.

Crossing the Miami River, I drove west on Seventh Street about two dozen blocks to Little Havana, Miami’s predominantly Cuban neighborhood. Actually, Eighth Street is considered Little Havana’s main street.

Look closely and you will see that almost every shop bears a Spanish name. And on every block, there seem to be two or three walk-up windows where you can buy the spicy Cuban-style hamburgers with onions called fritas, and churros, the crisp pastry sticks that young folks favor.

I called on King Cream, a modest looking ice cream shop that came highly recommended. I soon found out why. It sells homemade ice cream flavored with exotic--that word again--tropical fruits, most of which I had never heard of. I ordered a cone of mammee, and asked the owner what the fruit looks like. He pointed to a large mural depicting a variety of strange fruits. The mammee resembles a melon, with red fruit and a single large seed.

My tour then took me west and south to Coral Gables, one of the area’s loveliest communities. Begun in the boom days of the 1920s, it was designed in a Spanish Mediterranean style with plazas and fountains honoring the early Spanish colonization of Florida.

Other stops included:

Metrozoo--where I wanted to see the rare little koalas, the teddy bear-like creatures that eat eucalyptus leaves. A descriptive sign on the cage noted that koalas emit an odor of cough drops because of their peculiar diet.

Fairchild Tropical Garden--on 83 acres just south of Coconut Grove. The sun had all but scorched me at the zoo, so it was refreshing to plunge beneath the canopy of the rain forest at Fairchild. The garden surrounds several murky lakes, where discreet signs warn visitors to keep away from the alligators.

Parrot Jungle--another oasis of tropical verdure just a five-minute drive from Fairchild. About 1,100 tropical birds dwell in the park, many of them uncaged. Marco the macaw, an original resident when the attraction opened in 1936, once performed in the trained-parrot show.

Trained tropical birds still put on a good performance here, appealing mostly to children who delight in seeing the feathered stars race miniature chariots across a small stage.

At the end of my visit, I said goodby to Marco, drove back across Biscayne Bay to the beach and went for a sunset swim to reflect on my tour. As the lights popped on along Ocean Drive, I reached at least one solid conclusion: In exotic Miami, the unusual is almost usual.

GUIDEBOOK

Unusual Miami

Getting there: Fly nonstop daily from Los Angeles to Miami on American Airlines (800-223-5436) or Pan Am (800-221-1111). Round-trip coach fares are about $360, with some restrictions.

Where to stay: Miami Beach’s Art Deco hotels, about a 15-minute drive from the airport, have the charm of small inns, but limited services. About a dozen have been restored. Not all are on Ocean Drive, and only a few rooms have sea views.

At the Cavalier, the high-season double rate from now through April 14 is $105 for a “deco deluxe” room. An ocean-front room is $135 per night, and an ocean-front suite runs $175 a night. Service charge and taxes total 21%, but a large continental breakfast is complimentary. For information: (800) 338-9076 or (305) 534-2135.

Where to eat: I dined at three sidewalk cafes on Ocean Drive, each of them very good in its own way.

--The Cafe des Arts offers a tropical French menu. The day’s salad was a nice blend of apples, pineapples, avocado, capers and melon. Dessert was banana cheesecake. I might fly back to Miami to try it again. A full dinner for one with wine was about $43.

--Oggi is Italian, specializing in seafood and veal. I ordered a fresh fish dish with dill sauce. It was delicious. Dinner with wine for one was also about $43.

--The Stars and Stripes Cafe offers innovative American dishes reflecting the diversity of cultures in this country. Hot bread is served with an accompanying dish of olive oil mixed with crushed red peppers. You dip the bread into the oil for a change from butter. I ordered blackened grouper on a bed of pureed mango laced with chardonnay--the tastiest dish I’ve eaten all year. Dinner with wine for one was about $48.

For more information: Contact the Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, 701 Brickell Ave., Suite 2700, Miami, Fla. 33131, (800) 641-1111 or (305) 539-3000.