Exploring the Everglades

Of course, no visit to Florida is complete without a visit to the Everglades. It's the largest tropical wetlands region in the US, a pretty huge area covering a lot of Southern Florida (the National Park covers only about 20% of the Everglades).

We entered the Everglades by the rather inappropriately named Alligator Alley. Alligator Alley is the section of Interstate 75 that connects the East and West coasts of Florida, running just North of the National Park. Inappropriately in the sense that we didn't see any 'gators there, and I suspect they would have a hard time getting across the steel fence that separates the Interstate from the Everglades. Cool name, anyway ;-)

Anyway, we wanted to see some of those famous alligators, and the place to see them is Shark Alley, so that's where we headed. Not quite sure why the place is called Shark Alley, as it's more famous for its alligators than any fish ? Anyway, alligators we came to see, and alligators we saw. Loads of them. Most of them just lazing along the road, enjoying the sun. Some of them lazily swimming in the river running next to the footpath.

The fact that the alligators are lying on the ground just by the footpath is a bit disconcerting in the beginning, but one quickly gets the impression alligators are some of the laziest animals on earth. One better bear in mind though, that a big alligator would rather easily finish off a human if it put its mind to it. Actually, at one point, one of those 'gators opened its mouth and growled - which certainly caught our attention (the sound reminded me a bit of the 'raptor sounds from Jurassic Park!).

Apart from the main attraction, the gators, there were loads of birds about. Florida in general, and the Everglades in particular, seems to be very popular with birds of various kinds. Great place for ornithologists, that's for sure! And not a bad place for a keen amateur photographer like myself either!

We decided to head off before it got dark - after all, not spotting an alligator lying on the road and stepping on it is probably a pretty bad idea...! We drove on to Homestead, where we had a motel booked for the night. A pretty decent one, at that, the best one we'd stayed at so far in Florida. For dinner, we headed to a place called the Farmer's Market - a canteen type place where they served pretty decent food made from local produce.

The next day, the plan was to head off to the final destination on our trip, Miami. But before that, we wanted to explore the Everglades a bit further. So we decided to head to Anhinga Trail. Anhinga Trail is kind of the perfect introduction to the Everglades. It's a pretty short footpath (takes less than an hour to walk around in total), a boardwalk footpath crossing a typical sawgrass swamp.

It's a beautiful walk, it's just a pity we didn't see that much of the abundant wildlife the place is famous for. The walk is more pleasant than Shark Alley, but we saw less wildlife, for sure. There were a few birds about, and we did finally spot an alligator towards the end of the walk. Tick in the box, then ;-).

All in all, we loved our little introduction of the Everglades. Obviously the place merits a much longer visit, but oh well, I guess that'll have to be for the next time we visit! Direction, Miami, then!