Tuesday 27th December – Everglade adventures

We’d agreed that one of the things we ‘had’ to do in this area was have a go on an airboat – like the ones off of ‘Gentle Ben’ if you are of a certain age!  We headed into Everglades City and our decision over which of the numerous companies to go with came down to the usual issue – parking the RV. We found a car park with lots of space and this meant that we were now customers of ‘Jungle Erv’s’.  We went for a one hour wilderness ride with ‘Duane’.

This is not us... but we must've looked this cool....

Squeezing through the mangroves

Big Daddy alligator

Wee baby 'gator (had no fear of boats or people)

It was loud, hence the ear defenders, but great fun and we saw lots of different sized alligators amongst the mangroves. It turned out we didn’t even need to get on to the airboat to see one of the largest ‘gators yet – this beast was laying just behind the launch area in his usual territory (the gator, not Simon!):

Having done the air-boating we still wanted to see more of the everglades so we continued South to Chokoloske back towards the coast. This took us past Everglades State Park so we stopped off to take a look.  Well, more accurately Simon chilled out on the RV whilst I went to take a look at the wildlife.  I was pretty pleased that I did, spending a significant amount watching ospreys, this very friendly red-shouldered hawk and pelicans fishing in the sea. 

Red-shouldered hawk

On my wanderings I found an oyster-house restaurant and suggested to Simon that we just go for a happy hour drink to use the Wi-Fi before heading back to CS.  I got some serious blogging done whilst enjoying some seriously good coconut shrimp but the wi-fi only worked for me for some reason.  It was great to have a day out having spent Christmas at CS and by the time we returned to our plot it was dark and late in the evening.