Charleston, South Carolina

After leaving Savannah we followed the coast up to Charleston in South Carolina.

There are quite a few parallels with Savannah here:  Charleston was the first settlement in its region, the Carolinas; it has a historic district lined with the same live oaks draped with Spanish moss; and features similar architecture.

Our feet were still pretty ruined from the long walk the day before so we weren't really up for doing much exploring.  We decided to prioritise and, surprise surprise, food won.

We walked down the market street and the first thing that caught my eye was a shop called "Pepper Palace".  The shelves in this place were basically lined with jars of every imaginable type of sauce, salsa, wing sauce, marinade and seasoning, all home made.  They put tortilla chips out with sample bottles of everything so you could try them.  All the samples were labelled 1-10 to tell you how hot they were, 10 being the hottest.

I could have spent hours in this place.  I asked the guy behind the counter how much he wanted for the whole store, but he just laughed.  I don't think he realised I was serious.

Unfortunately I did my usual trick of going too far and had a big scoop of the only salsa in the shop that was rated 10+, hotter than the ghost chilli one which was 10.  It was fine for the first minute or so, then over the next five minutes the pain built and then peaked for a further ten minutes.  At one point, the cold drink I hastily bought when I felt the onset of the pain stopped having any healing effect and apparently my brain just gave up and forced my mouth to go completely numb.

Sharon just shook her head and gave me a look that said "every time!" as I tried to articulate the agony with my massively swollen tongue.

Here I am shortly afterwards trying to pretend my skull isn't melting from the inside:

When I could feel my face again, we walked on and settled down to lunch at an amazing seafood restaurant called the Noisy Oyster.  While we were there, the local fire department paraded all of their vehicles through the streets, I think in honour of their Fire Chief who had recently passed away.

After a typically satisfying late lunch, we waddled down to the harbourside for a while before heading back to the RV and getting on the road:

If you look closely in that picture, you might be able to see the dorsal fin of a dolphin to the left of the pier.  Apparently dolphins are a common sight there and we saw a few more before we left.