Helicopter from Miami to Everglades

This is the only stretch of the world where both animals live side by side. The alligator holds the fresh water inland, the crocodile the brackish and salt water of the coast, and their ranges overlap here and nowhere else. The overlap sits where the day begins. The coast at Everglades City is crocodile water, the sawgrass you crossed is alligator country, and a boat out of town moves from one to the other in an afternoon. Both grow past ten feet, which is the detail guests repeat afterwards. Seeing them is a matter of where the water is rather than of luck. In the dry half of the year they concentrate in what is left of it, which is why the operators work to the water level and not to a schedule. From the cabin they read as dark commas on pale ground.

The airboat is the picture everybody already has of this place, and it is a fair one: flat bottom, no draught, the same speed over grass as over water. They run from the Gulf coast as well as from the highway. The quieter half is the backcountry skiff, which goes further and slower into the mangrove tunnels and over the oyster bars where an airboat has no business being. Both leave from within a few minutes of town, so the choice is made on the day rather than at the enquiry. Ground transport covers the short distance to the water. Both are a half day rather than a full one, which is why this works as a single visit. A party that lands in the morning has the boat and a table afterwards inside the same day. Tell us which of the two you want when you send the dates and it is held before you arrive.

South of Chokoloskee the coastline stops being a line. It breaks into mangrove keys, hundreds of them, running south for miles with channels and oyster bars threading between them. Nothing paved goes there, and that is the whole point of them. It is also what fills the windows on the way in, which is the argument for flying rather than driving: the shape of this coast only resolves from the air. On the ground it becomes a boat day, out through the passes and back on the tide. Add a picnic or water toys if the afternoon is meant to be spent out there rather than looked at.

The dry season runs November through April. Water levels fall through those months, what is left holds the fish, and the wading birds gather around it in the highest numbers of the year. That is why the month decides more here than the hour does. Herons, egrets and ibis are present all year, but in February they are standing in the same few hundred yards of water instead of spread across a million and a half acres. Migrating birds moving north add to it. A party that comes in August sees a greener, emptier park and far fewer of them, which is worth naming when you send the date rather than after it.

The town is small and old and takes about ten minutes to walk end to end. The park's western visitor centre sits at the water rather than at a trailhead, which tells you how people actually arrive here. Chokoloskee lies three miles further out along a causeway, and the seafood houses between the two are the reason a good number of parties book the day at all. Guests who want a table rather than a boat book a fly and dine day. Anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

If the day is about fish rather than photographs, the water off Everglades City is the reason people keep a boat here. Snook, redfish and tarpon work the passes and the mangrove edges, and the flats behind the islands hold fish in water clear enough to see the bottom of. Rods and gear travel, within the payload for the aircraft on the day. Parties book flats access or a full fishing day by air and the aircraft waits rather than fixing the hour you come off the water. The water here is a different proposition from the open sea, and that is the appeal. You are casting at a mangrove edge or across a shallow flat with the fish visible ahead of the boat, which asks more of the caster and gives back more. Guides run out of the town and out of Chokoloskee.

The interior is the half almost nobody sees properly. Shark Valley sits on the Tamiami Trail at the Miami entrance and looks out over the sawgrass prairie, the shallow sheet of water the entire system rests on. From the cabin that sheet reads as a landscape instead of a swamp: cypress domes, tree islands, the slow braid of channels and the straight old line of the road cutting across all of it. A scenic loop added to the outbound leg is the cheapest hour of the day, because the aircraft is going that way regardless.

Helicopter rides Miami Everglades also work as the first leg rather than the whole day. The same aircraft carries on north to Marco Island, Naples and Fort Myers or south east into the Florida Keys. That is what turns one stop into island hopping or a wider Florida day. An overnight changes the baggage, not the route. A date that has to look like something is where the catering on board and the extras come in, and the baggage guidance sets out what goes in the back. If a boat is meeting you, that is a yacht transfer, arranged with the flight rather than found on the day. Anything larger than luggage is island logistics. The full guide to the park sits on the Everglades destination page, the packaged version is the Everglades getaway day trip and the rest of the state is on the Florida destinations page.