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Everglades National ParkDear All
In my last blog entry from my base in Florida City, I related my adventures on two separate days in the Florida Keys. This one will regale my time on two separate days in the Everglades. Florida City is a perfect base for both, and I chose my motel well, being halfway between the two in a town that is infinitely cheaper than anywhere in the Keys. Key West is incidentally the most expensive place in the USA for accommodation, and most places were coming up with prices of at least £150 per night. The cheapest accommodations were on small off-shore yachts you had to kayak to yourself with your luggage, at around £100 per night. I certainly wasn’t going to part with my hard-earned money with such exhorbitant prices, and felt my choice to locate myself in Florida City was just perfect. The room was spacious and comfortable, and a great base to return to after some amazing days sightseeing in this southernmost part of Florida.
So along with two amazing sightseeing days in the Keys, I also had two amazing sightseeing days in the Everglades. My goodness, this place is amazing. As one of my
Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake
Mahogany Hammock Trail, Everglades National Park guides there said, while the USA is famous for its National Parks of geological wonders, this third-largest of the country’s National Parks is more famous for its wildlife. And he wasn’t wrong – the place is bursting with it, with glorious sights and sounds all around.
I had an amazing first full day exploring the wonders of its southern route, right on the doorstep of my motel. The Everglades National Park has a southern route through it, and a northern route. I came to explore more of the southern one, and felt I made the right choice with that one. This is a 40-mile driving route from the Ernest Coe Visitor Centre in the south-east corner of the park, through the deep heart of the wildlife-filled mangrove forests, grasslands and marshes to Flamingo Marina on the southern tip of the Everglades and Florida. There are numerous and very interesting stopping routes on the way, which having the freedom of my own car meant I could explore them at my leisure.
First up was a brief introduction to the region at the air-conditioned Ernest Coe Visitor Centre, before a stop at my favourite, albeit the busiest and most popular,
American Crocodile
Backcountry Boat Tour, Everglades National Park place on the route – the Anhinga Trail. The anhinga, also known as the snake bird due to its elongated neck, head and beak, is common throughout the tropical regions of the Americas, including here. I spotted a few, but the Anhinga Trail is surely not limited to this species. Along its mile-long stretch of paths and boardwalks I spotted alligators, herons, cormorants, and waters simply packed with fish – both small ones, and larger ones such as pikes. At one point I saw a pike with a small fish in its mouth, and later a cormorant which was having difficulty swallowing a flippering fish it had just caught, with the latter eventually getting away. While also packed with people, the trail was a wonderful introduction to the day, and certainly the place which had the most amount of wildlife packed into it.
From here, I did another mile-long trail called the Gumbo Limbo Trail, having this one completely to myself as everyone else was headed to its more popular neighbour. The Gumbo Limbo is a common Everglades tree with the nickname “tourist tree”, due to its peeling red bark which is similar to the peeling skin of a
Me, Anhinga Trail
Everglades National Park Floridian tourist. With my serious tan and peeling skin, I could certainly relate to this!
Next I headed to the Pa-Hay-Okee, meaning “grassy waters”, lookout. This was a short boardwalk with a very slight elevation over the surrounding otherwise very flat land. Florida incidentally is as flat as a pancake, with its highest point of Britton Hill in the far north of the state being a mere 105 metres above sea level. The Everglades has an average elevation of a tiny 6.1 metres throughout its 1.5 million acres of wetlands. This makes for a seriously flat landscape, and it was nice to have a little bit of aspect over it. Other than a slight view, there was nothing particularly special about the lookout, but on the way were some awesome scenes! I stopped where a couple of other cars were stopped, to spy a mother alligator with two little baby alligators, a large flock of at least 20 ibis (ibises? ibisi?) with a giant and powerful-looking wood stork in the middle, and a beautiful view of wetland interspersed with the buttress roots of tall trees, reflected perfectly in the water. While the Pa-Hay-Okee lookout wasn’t all that, the road
Anhinga Trail
Everglades National Park there was amazing!
My route here was heading towards the end of the road at Flamingo Marina where I had booked a boat tour for later in the day, but I still had a couple of hours to explore a four-mile hike I was thinking about doing along a route called Christian Point Trail, described by my Lonely Planet as one of the southern Everglades best trails due to it ending up with dramatic views over the windswept shores of Florida Bay. As soon as I started the trail however, I realised this was not for me. I was the only one parked up in its tiny parking area, it was hot and there was little cover in parts of it, it was muddy and certainly not an easy path, through land shared by alligators, crocodiles and snakes. I was also alone. I realised quickly that while I was in my element with the board walks and set paths of the Everglades, I was not going to be into such off-piste travelling. I called it a day on this trail after a few minutes.
Instead, with a bit of time to spare, I backtracked along the route to
Alligator
Anhinga Trail, Everglades National Park the lovely Mahogany Hammock Trail which I had passed earlier in my efforts to have a couple of hours for the Christian Point Trail. I was so glad to have made this decision. Hammocks are common in the Everglades, and are dense patches of broad-leafed trees that grow on natural rises of only a few inches in elevation. I believe it is the slightly raised land that means the soil is above the water level of the marshes, and thus proper trees can and do grow abundantly there. Here there was a lovely trail that wound in a circular route through the hammock, the highlight here being spying (fortunately not stepping on!) a venomous Eastern diamondback rattlesnake in the undergrowth!
By this time, my boat tour from Flamingo Marina at the end of the southern route was approaching, and I headed to this little tourist hub on the edge of the Florida Bay. It had a small grocery and souvenir store where I bought a bite to eat for lunch and enjoyed the air-conditioning, before perching myself on a nice picnic bench overlooking the Flamingo Canal which empties into the sea there. I had booked myself into the last
Anhinga Trail
Everglades National Park boat tour from there for the day at 3pm. This was a slow boat “Backcountry Tour” which headed up this canal, through the small Coot Bay lake, and parts of the huge expanse of Whitewater Bay. The guide was chatty, informative, and good-humoured, and we got to see exactly what I was very much hoping to see – the American crocodile!! I was so happy to have seen this. Alligators are plentiful in the Everglades, as well as Florida, with around 200,000 in the former, and 1.25 million in the latter. Of course I was always excited to see these, from my first sightings to my last, but the crocodile is much rarer and infrequently seen. There are only around 2000 to 3000 crocodiles in the whole of the state of Florida, and these mostly live in these parts of the Everglades. This was certainly the place to spot them if you wanted to!
We saw around six in total, some swimming unnervingly in the surrounding water, some on the banks amongst the branches and much easier to spot. The main differences between crocodiles and alligators are apparently seen in their colour and snouts, but I got to tell
Anhinga Trail
Everglades National Park the difference by their teeth. The teeth you see in alligators are all upper teeth pointing down, while you can see both upper and lower teeth in crocodiles. This came to be my litmus test for distinguishing alligators from crocodiles, realising that pretty much everything I saw in Florida was an alligator. Not so in these parts though, yay! The tour guide also pointed out a manatee! The first I have seen in the wild, or even anywhere for that matter! Yay! I was happy. It was very much underwater though and munching, and all you could really see was its bluey colour on the surface a few times, nothing much else was distinguishable so my photos were not great! But yes, after unsuccessful attempts back in Belize a few years ago, and at the Manatee Viewing Centre back in Tampa earlier in this trip, I had at last come to see one of these beautiful creatures in the wild! It was a great boat tour!
By this time, the park was emptying, and on my drive back I pretty much had the whole 40-mile road to myself! It was around 5pm, and a certain and magical hush was
Alligator
Anhinga Trail, Everglades National Park descending over the Park as it became freer of tourists. This was my favourite time there I think.
On the way back, I stopped off at my final point for the day, the lovely and very peaceful West Lake Viewpoint. This was a boardwalk along the edges of West Lake, where I only came across two fishermen aside from myself. It was very peaceful and tranquil, and I could have spent much more time there than I did.
Upon leaving the Viewpoint, I came across the very unnerving figure of a huge alligator crossing the road in front of me. I slowed down my car as I drove past it and then stopped, taking some amazing photos of it. It was perfectly still for most of the time I was there, apart from one point when it moved its body sideways so quickly it was like a flash. These creatures are awesome, and I saw their power here – absolutely stock-still for most of the time, but seriously fast if they want to be. Apparently they can swim up to 20mph and run up to 30mph!! I was so glad to be in my car, I would not
Anhinga Trail
Everglades National Park want to be sharing either land or water space with an alligator. Having said that, despite their numbers, only 24 people have been killed by alligators in Florida since 1948, and none have been killed by crocodiles. The latter are much warier of humans apparently. This would explain why some people kayak in the Everglades, of whom I saw a fair few at Flamingo Marina. Despite the statistics, I’m not sure I would want to do this to be honest.
Thus ended an absolutely magical day in the Everglades National Park!
I also had a second day, more like a couple of hours, on my return journey from Florida City back to Fort Lauderdale Airport to drop off my rental car again. I was due to drop it off at 1pm, and although I would very much have liked to have dropped it off later, I wouldn’t have had enough time later to explore Miami which I think was actually preferable.
I decided on this morning to explore the other road through the Everglades, the northern one. This one is not one-way like the Flamingo Marina one, but is a through-route between Miami and Naples. It also
Anhinga Trail
Everglades National Park doesn’t go through the Park like its southern neighbour, but rather skirts its northern border with places of interest reached by going south of it. I think I made the right decision as to which road to spend more time exploring, as this one was busy and sometimes had two lanes of traffic each way – it didn’t feel quite the same as the serene and peaceful southern route.
Options here include the very famous and popular Shark Valley Tram Tour, which the Lonely Planet describes as the place to visit if you only have time for one Everglades activity. I was glad it was booked up when I looked online the day before though, as although fair enough I don’t know what I was missing, I really enjoyed the alternative. This was a visit to the fantastic Miccosukee Indian Village.
I think I have decided that in my future planned annual visits to the States, I’m going to try to learn about and visit places relating to its Native American history and culture whenever these opportunities present themselves. In the Everglades National Park, I had this opportunity in visiting this brilliant cultural centre and museum showcasing the
Alligator
Anhinga Trail, Everglades National Park Miccosukee people. The native American people of Florida are actually the Seminole people, numbering around 4000 people in Florida and 15,000 in Oklahoma where they were forcibly moved following the Second Seminole War, or Florida War, of 1835 to 1842 between the Native American people there and the European settlers. In the mid-20
th century, the Miccosukee people organised themselves as a separate independent tribe from the Seminoles, and have been recognised as separate by the US government ever since. They number only 400 people, and live exclusively in this part of the Everglades National Park. Here, they have this excellent Miccosukee Indian Village which introduces visitors to various aspects of Miccosukee and Seminole culture and history. I arrived at opening time at 9am, and had the whole place to myself. It is an open-air museum where you can walk through a reconstructed Indian village, buy handicrafts from Miccosukee craftsmen, learn about the tribe through its brilliant and informative museum with short films, see numerous captive alligators presumably kept for their alligator wrestling shows, and walk through parts of the Everglades on its very own boardwalk. I loved my time there, and due to the early hour it was a very
Alligator
Anhinga Trail, Everglades National Park peaceful tour to myself. Unfortunately I was too early for their intriguing-looking alligator wrestling show at 11am, and also an airboat tour led by a Miccosukee guide at 12pm, both of which I would have loved, and my rental car return time was calling me to leave around 10.30am. Still, I was so glad I decided to spend my time on this last morning of this part of the trip learning about the Native American history and culture there. As mentioned, I will strive to do similar things on future US visits.
From here, I drove my beauty of a rental car on its final stretch to hand it back at Fort Lauderdale Airport, and I was actually quite sad to let it go. I would come to miss it, not only the ease of having my own wheels, but also having the top down and seriously enjoying a proper US road trip in the beautiful southern parts of Florida. Having said our sad goodbyes, there were no additional charges when I handed it back, which was at least a bonus!
I was to come to rely on public transport again once more, which didn’t go too badly
Heron
Anhinga Trail, Everglades National Park at all, as I was to make my way there from Fort Lauderdale Airport onto my final accommodation in Miami for my last two nights on this amazing Floridian adventure. More on that in my next one!
Until then, thanks very much for reading, and all the best for now.
Alex
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Katha Turbostern
Kathas World
Wildlife & culture
What an abundance of wildlife you got to see in the park, wow! I never knew the difference between crocodiles and alligators, now I do. And what a good decision to drive the southern route through the park on your first day, not to walk the Christian Point Trail all by yourself, and to go and learn something about the local native people instead of catching the (certainly very touristy!) tram!