Leaving Orlando today, packed up fairly quickly in the morning and were out of the house by 9.45am – stopped by one of the ticket selling places and sold our tickets for $5 each, probably ripped off something chronic but it’s not something we expected so that was acceptable.
Drove down the highway (not the Interstate) towards Fort Myers for the next two nights of our holiday. It was a long drive as it wasn’t the motorway and it took us through loads of towns along the way. The sights were really interesting so I was pleased we’d done that as there would have been loads we’d have missed. It was very much old, run down trailer parks all the way. Very different to what we’d been used to but also very much the ‘typical’ portrayal of Southern America.
There is so much land as well – huge.
Finally made it down to Fort Myers, didn’t stop and went straight over the Causeway and some cool bridges onto Sanibel Island, we continued through Sanibel up to Captiva – all very exclusive and rich buildings along the road. Fantasy Island, I later looked on the internet and some of the houses being sold were upwards of £5.9 million – hardly a surprise when you look at them!
Tash had read about guided kayak tours so this is what we were looking for and found the first one and stopped – we initially enquired about hiring the kayaks ourselves and then decided on paying extra and getting a tour. There wasn’t one available for 2 hours so we sat in the hotel pool area and had a swim and a snooze and then at 3.45pm met up with a couple and went out into the channel kayaking. The couple we were with weren’t much fun and we didn’t see much of them, the woman was scared silly – but they were just left to their own devices really and it didn’t affect us at all.
As soon as we were out we saw Manatees in the water, so close, bit scary to think of these things that close but we were save and then we moved across to a small island that was Mangrove tree (and swamp) and skirted round it before finding a channel to go through the middle of it. First of all it was Hurricane Bowl and then a small channel in single file, twisting and turning very slowly and stopping to pick up water snakes and see the crabs and shellfish – quite amazing really.
Outside of that we were back in the open water, miles from where we’d started and we went out further to try and find more manatees and even a dolphin. All around us fish were jumping out of the water, couldn’t get used to that sight at all, they were cleaning their gills from feeding along the bottom of the river bed. We started on our way back and then saw 3 manatees close by which we followed for a bit before leaving them alone – sadly no dolphins spotted.
We then went back to the Mangrove Island and picked out living shells and even star-fish which Jack was good at finding, really interesting, all the kids were loving it. That was that and we made our way back after about 2.15hrs – time and money REALLY well spent.
We had a quick drive around the rest of Captiva and then back through Sanibel, across the Causeway to Fort Myers beach where we found our hotel. Not sure if it could be called a hotel but it was very bright, lit up and good fun. Dumped our stuff, showered and then walked to the town as we’re really close – found a great bar immediately so decided to stop there for dinner. It was very popular and it was easy to see why, the food was fantastic. We all had fish and chips – loads of it and really tasty. Couple of beers but I could easily have had a few more…
Everyone tired through, so walked across the pier and then back to hotel and bed.
A really fantastic day, the drive was longer than I wanted because I didn’t go along the motorway but the kayaking was just out of this world and will be a fantastic memory for the kids, really pleased we did it.
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