If you are visiting the man-made and theme park attractions or beach resorts of Central Florida it is certainly a bit out of the way to get down to the Everglades but, combined with a trip to Art Deco Miami Beach and out to Key West, it can be well worthwhile.

The Everglades is situated only a few miles SW of the enormous Miami conurbation and is on the list of Endangered WHS both because of the effect of water usage and diversions “upstream” of the park which threaten to deny the area the water supply it needs to maintain its ecosystem and because of the pollution caused by fertilisers etc.

It will be said of most US National Parks that you need to get out of your car to really appreciate them and this is perhaps particularly true of the Everglades. A large part of the Park consists of Florida Bay and its myriad of Keys (but the boundary runs just inside of Highway 1 down to Key West) and the land based part really only has 1 highway crossing it and another skirting the boundary to the North.

It might have been nice to get out onto the water, whether on the Bay or on a canoe on the many canoe trails – but we had neither time nor skill. Neither did we particularly fancy an “Airboat tour” on craft driven by noisy airplane engines with rear facing propellers. So we made do with driving along most of the available roads and going on some of the walks. We decided to give the touristy “Tram Tour” at Shark Valley a miss and walked the tarmac-covered trail instead. We found this a very pleasant side trip and, once a tram has passed, you are likely to meet only the occasional cyclist. We were amazed at just how much wild life there was and are unlikely to ever walk as close to an alligator again. You are advised to keep at around 5 metres distance and my personal photos seem to show we (albeit unwisely) got a good bit closer! Apparently the Alligators out on land are more likely to be afraid of humans – but it still seems amazing that attacks are not so frequent as to require stricter safety measures!

There is quite a range of scenery - from open “saw grass” plains with their “Hammocks” (dry “Islands” covered in trees and rising a few feet above the surrounding area) to dark mossy forested swamps. We were there in pleasant December – beware the mosquitoes from March to October!