The Best Tours in Everglades City

This is a wonderful alternative to an airboat ride … quiet, peaceful and surreal. It is a leisurely paddle experience with a naturalist guide who throughout the tour will be interpreting and explaining what you are seeing. It is a great learning experience in a very unique part of the Everglades. The Everglades is a vast and varied ecosystem containing the largest mangrove forest in North America. Throughout the forest are brackish "lakes" whose waters are a mix of "sweet" fresh water and salt water. They are refuges and nursery grounds for alligators, herons, egrets, stilts, ducks, wood storks, spoonbills,  otters, orchids and bromeliads and a gamut of fishes. Some lakes are host to colonies of roosting and breeding birds. Interconnecting these lakes are narrow, flowing tidal creeks. The mangrove forest grows to the very edge and over the tops of these creeks forming a canopy or a tunnel. The dense canopy regulates moisture and humidity allowing  to thrive.

You will be safely brought deep into the 10,000 Islands Wildlife Refuge for a two-hour interpretive tour of the area led by a Florida Master Naturalist. Depending on the season, you can expect to encounter manatees, dolphins, sea turtles, bald eagles, ospreys, herons, egrets, pelicans, rosette spoonbills, as well as, numerous species of fish and shore birds.