Everglades Trip

[John D]

Me again!! Has anyone pre-booked the 'Everglades Safari' with Virgin? What is the day like and where do you set out from?

Thanks again.

John

:group:

[Keith]

yeah in May!

It was a VERY long day... the coach picked us up at 6ish I think? Something like that anyway.

Then took us all the way to the "Billy Swamp" in the everglades. We had an airboat ride which was brilliant! Fast, exciting but SOOOOOO noisy!!

Then we looked around the rest of the swamp area.... really enjoyed this bit.

One thing.... they ask you how many people would want to do an extra ride on ... and I forget exactly what it's called, but a big wheeled truck type of thing with seats all the way down it.

If enough people say yes, they book it and it's *WELL* worth it! better than the airboat ride in some ways. You get much closer to the animals and so on and it must have taken an hour or so.

Then there's another drive over to a WONDERFUL luxury yacht worth millions for a wonderful sightseeing cruise round naples.... wow. Dolphins jumping out of the sea.... houses like you've never seen before.... just amazing.

Then it was onto a beach (snore snore) ;-) I dont do sunbathing so that part just bored me totally.

Got back VERY late and tired.

All in all, it was a good day, the criticism by most of us was that the everglades part was too short. I wish they'd forgotten the beach part and given more time actually AT the everglades.

The actual tour was run by this company http://www.gatortours.com/Everglades.htm

[John D]

Cheers Keith - it sounds great!!

[mikeyUK]

I went down to the everglades years ago, but this was self driving. First of all we booked to go on a very touristy trip which was actually in a big air boat holding about 20 people and it was just not that exciting, the trip was short and unispiring.

Not put off, we drove further across the everglades and came across a few private companies with smaller, what I would think as, proper airboats whihc hold driver and up to 4 or 5 people. So we hired it out ourselves privately, it cost $60 for the boat and driver/guide (10 yrs ago) but it was WELL worth it, the boat was much faster, much more exciting, it was very interesting and the guy took us out for nearly 2 hours, it was amazing and a totally different experience. So i would say, if you can drive yourself there it is worth considering this option. I think the town we went to was called something like chocoloccee (I am sure i have spelt that wrong) on the western side of the everglades.

the tourist trip cost us $10 each, the extra for the private boat was WELL worth it.

cheers
Mike

[Fran]

I think it must have been Chokoloskee - it's a small place with a good Old trading post museum. Take plenty of bug spray though - but it's worth a trip. There is a short airboat trip from Marco Island which isn't self drive but isn't too commercial. Some of the ones around Everglades City were a bit 'tacky tourist traps' a couple of years ago.

[Keith]

Luckily on the Virgin tour the airboat was the 5 people + driver, small and exciting variety rather than the 20 people slow and boring type ;-)

...but it wasnt two hours long <G>