We continued South down the West coast of Florida, heading for the Everglades. Along the West Coast of Florida are lots of old people, retirement communities, flat roofed concrete buildings, some boating communities and car accidents. Not much to spark our interest nor for young people. The weather was hot and humid and the box buildings all look the same. So we just continued south to punch on through it.....
Once south of Naples, we headed into the Everglades in search of Wildlife, National Parks with Monsters and Airboats.
The Everglades are tropical wetlands - largely cordoned off as a National park. Soggy swamps in the rainy season and grassy plains during the summer. It was all a lot hotter than previous years - but last year's record El Nino storms had dumped a lot of water everywhere. So Airboat rides were still available in the brackish water..
We didn't realize it at first - but the whole Mangrove Forrest for hundreds of miles is infested with giant Burmese Pythons; who are eating the wildlife into an endangered state.
The Guy we spoke to, who hunted them, said they taste like Alligator, but much chewier... so that helped!! LOL!
The Everglades take up a huge chunk of southern Florida. A National Park, set aside to remain , for now, without human destruction. There's one major freeway that runs form East to West through it. It's a flat, most straight road with not a lot to see, at first glance. So we had to dig a little deeper..
We heard a sad story about a female Cougar who had been hit by a truck, on the Everglades road. Some people rescued it, and nursed it back to life. They then released it, back into the forest. She gradually made her way back to where she had last seen her babies, by the roadside. Where she had been hit. The babies were unfortunately long gone. The next day; she was hit by another truck and killed dead.
There are only 100 Floridian Panthers left in the Everglades.
We took a coupe of airboat rides. Partly for the thrill. Partly to see who lives in the dense Mangrove Swamps....
After the Everglades we traveled South-East, down to the bottom tip of Florida; out into the National park. An empty desolate area; not very picturesque - but birds are happy. At the end of the road, in the National Park was a small place called Flamingo. We'd like to have seen some Flamingos' - but apparently is was named after a very few Flamingos' that decided to turn up one year, lost from their trip to the Bahamas.
Finally, we moved up North to get ready to visit Miami. ....
