An eco-tourism adventure: nature offers Florida’s biggest thrills

Best known for their hammock-swinging, margarita-sipping vacation lifestyle, the Florida Keys are also dappled with a biodiverse trove of state parks, coastal sanctuaries and nature reserves, and first of those for me to discover was John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo. 

Named after the Miami Herald journalist and environmentalist who championed its foundation, the park was established as the country’s first underwater marine reserve in 1960 to protect Florida’s vulnerable reef systems. 

Back in those days, corals were ham-fistedly harvested for the souvenir trade, but nowadays, the delicate ecosystems can still be admired in their natural habitat — preferably with a pair of flippers.

I began my Florida adventure by doing just that and headed offshore with Pennekamp’s outfitter for a morning snorkelling excursion ( pennekamppark.com; €48). 

The park is home to several dive reefs and after navigating through the dense mangroves which buttress the park, we anchored up in the open water. 

Conditions were a little squally following a week of high winds and my first attempt to reach the reef was aborted due to a smack of moon jellyfish motioning around me. 

However, on my second plunge, I navigate the jellies with more grit and make my way to the reef where a parallel world of barracudas, snappers and parrot fish all weaved between me and a gently fanning seascape of corals, sponges and seagrasses.

To learn more about these systems, back on dry land I paid a visit to Key Largo’s very own coral nursery run by research non-profit Mote Marine Laboratory. Free public tours are offered daily ( mote.org; donations welcome) and sixth-generation Keys native Erin Muir guides me through the fascinating open-air facility where marine biologists employ innovative research to grow up to 20,000 coral fragments in order to restore the region’s reefs at an optimised rate. 

Tourists to the Keys can even embark on restoration dives to plant coral…if that’s not an incentive to get a PADI certification, what is?

With Key Largo in my rearview mirror, my journey continued along the Overseas Highway, the iconic road system which links the islands to the mainland. 

Vibes vacillate with every mile marker along the way; land stretches of the famous route are anonymous strip mall thoroughfares but for the proliferation of coconut palms and Sandal Factory outlets. 

However, any elevation yields screensaver vistas, not least from Seven Mile Bridge which skims over the Key’s tropical waters. It’s worth detouring off the main drag, too. 

On Big Pine Key, I drive through the sandy-tracked neighbourhoods of dreamy, if imperilled, beach bungalows to encounter some diminutive Key deer, America’s smallest deer species which have evolved on these islands over 10,000 years.

My next stop was Marathon Key, home to one of the most popular ecotourism attractions on the archipelago, The Turtle Hospital. 

The former motel is said to be the world’s only hospital dedicated to endangered sea turtles and guided tours here offer a behind-the-scenes look at the rescue, rehabilitation and release of the animals ( turtlehospital.org; €28). 

Guide Carla chaperones us from the hospital’s operating surgery to its rehab pools while highlighting the hazards sea turtles face in Florida from boat collisions to plastic traumas. 

In the x-ray room, a recent rescue, Doc, is trying to make a valiant getaway while awaiting a check-up. 

However Doc’s prognosis is hopeful and like the majority of his co-patients, he’ll be back, starring in underwater GoPro action pretty soon.

The Turtle Hospital makes for an enlightening, family-accessible eco-attraction - even if the doling out of complimentary bottled water seemed a rather gauche irony. 

But that incidental gesture mirrors an at times dichotomous feel to green living on the Keys. 

There’s a pervasive culture of single-use plastic on the islands (just try ordering that margarita in anything else) while roadside tourist attractions still feature the likes of swimming with captive dolphins or, yes, painting with sea lions — surely tourism offerings which themselves need disposing of?

180km later, I’d finally run out of Overseas Highway road as I reached the archipelago’s buzzing terminus, the sun-kissed hub of Key West. 

For much of the 1800s, Key West was in fact the largest city in Florida — and the wealthiest city in the US — and I could still feel the pulse of its heyday era wandering around its historic streets of pastel townhouses, which includes the former home of Ernest Hemingway, to its characterful Old Harbour which feels like a Disney pirates’ cove. 

The town is famed for its nightly sunset celebrations at Mallory Square, but for a little less crowds, I take a sunset wine-tasting cruise on a traditional schooner ( dangercharters.com; €98) before enjoying a muy deliciosa meal at the electric Cuban restaurant, El Meson de Pepe. 

Key West is famously closer to Havana than Miami so there's a strong Cuban population in this very diverse outpost. In fact, from a vibrant LGBT+ community to enough Trump t-shirts to keep a Republican Convention kitted out, this is an eclectic town where you feel everyone finds their tribe.

By the time I’d arrived in Key West, however, Gulf winds were rumbling and my plans for an e-boat dolphin-watching trip as well as a kayaking outing in the mangroves were shelved. 

However, there was still a destination where I could fulfil my adventure ambitions — and it would lead me to one of the planet’s most unique wildernesses and America’s most enigmatic national parks: the mighty Everglades.

The million-acre wilderness lies just ten miles, as the pelican flies, across from the Florida Keys making it a convenient and pretty symbiotic add-on to a visit to the region. 

And while the Everglades may be famed for its infinite wetlands, the national park hosts just enough terra firma for a campsite or two — so I checked into Flamingo campground, 50km deep into the wilds.

Equipped with my stack of tips from the park’s affable rangers, for three days I toured the southernmost swathes of the Everglades, taking in the trails and boardwalks which traverse the park’s diverse habitats from freshwater prairies to lush hammock groves where America’s largest mahogany trees flourish. 

The park’s abundant wildlife is what really exhilarates, however, and I encounter alligators, turtles, cottonmouth snakes, a lone coyote and an incredible profusion of birds, from osprey and pelicans to egrets and vultures. 

The highlight was perhaps enjoying my coffee at the marina each morning with a pod of manatees who would bob around the dock in the hope of lapping up a stray drop of fresh water. 

Unlike the wildlife, tourist numbers feel massively diluted in the Everglades - if the one million visitors to the park annually turned up at once, you could spread them out over one per acre.

When it comes to tourism, the Everglades are perhaps best known for the airboat rides which whizz visitors across infinite sawgrass rivers in search of alligators. 

However with some unfinished business following my trip to The Keys, I’d opted to discover the area at a slower ebb — with some backcountry kayaking. 

The Waterway Wilderness is the park’s 99-mile kayaking route which winds through its remotest wetlands, but for someone who’s a little nervy on water (and not the best with crocodiles either), I calculated that covering about five of those miles would be an adequate boundary pusher.

It was out there, paddling through the unforgiving labyrinth of mangroves solo, that I truly connected with the Everglades wilderness; the sheer scale and loneliness of the wilds… where even the sight of an occasional ibis offered me some sense of company. 

I’d been advised that the biggest hazard I’d face would be a short-sighted manatee capsizing my vessel but I do encounter one whopper of a crocodile who’s had me clocked long before the other way around. 

A mutual wide berth however saw me back at the marina unscathed in what was an unforgettable crescendo to a phenomenal first trip to Florida. Forget Big Thunder Mountain, nature always delivers the real-life rollercoaster.

A Taste of Key West

Seafood is king on the Keys so expect fabulously fresh dishes from coconut shrimp to conch fritters. 

Expect a huge trawl of dining options from market-style Key Largo Fisheries, swisher options like Marker 88 and historic locales like Key West’s Half Shell Raw Bar. For your coffee fix, order a cortadito; a double Cuban espresso with cane sugar, topped with steamed milk. 

And dessert? The Key Lime Shop in Key West is a classic spot to pick up a slice of the island’s famous pie, they even offer a gluten-free version!

Dream Stays

• The top bolthole for my stay was Bay Harbor & Coconut Bay Resort where my retro Floridian cottage offered a paradise base to explore Key Largo (rooms from €170; cottages from €280). 
• Midway along the Keys, The Amara Cay in Islamorada is a four-star resort offering great sunrises along its palm-fringed shore (from €270) while in Key West, Ocean’s Edge Resort is a bougie boutique haven with a Martha’s Vineyard air (from €280). 
• In the Everglades, my safari-style eco-tent, which was kitted with a hotel-quality bed cost an excellent €140 per night, standard camping at Flamingo Campground is available for €28 per night.

Escape Notes

Aer Lingus fly direct from Dublin to Miami twice weekly from October to March with return fares from €479. 

From Miami International Airport, the Florida Keys lie just 80km south while the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center gateway to the Everglades is 70km away. 

You’ll find dining and accommodation can be quite pricey in the Keys but I also found car rental and gas to be cheaper in Florida versus other US destinations.

• For more on the region, see fla-keys.com. 
• Thom was a guest of the Florida Keys and Aer Lingus.