Helicopter from Miami to Fort Myers

Most parties come for the beach first, and the beach is not part of the city at all. Fort Myers Beach sits on Estero Island, seven miles of barrier island about fifteen miles southwest of downtown across the Matanzas Pass bridge.

The sand runs the whole length of it and shelves so gently that the water stays shallow a long way out. That is why this stretch reads as a family beach rather than a surf one.

Times Square at the north end is where the island gathers, with Lynn Hall Memorial Park beside it and a pier of about 560 feet running out into the Gulf. Bowditch Point sits at the very tip, quieter, looking back across the pass, and Crescent Beach in the middle is the version with fewer people on it.

A day built here usually wants a beach picnic rather than a restaurant booking. Add water toys if the afternoon is going to be spent in the water rather than beside it.

Sanibel is the reason people who know this coast keep coming back to it. The island lies east to west rather than north to south, which is unusual on this shore, and it catches shells off the Gulf the way a net catches fish.

It is routinely named among the best shelling beaches in the world and it has given the language the Sanibel Stoop, the bent-at-the-waist stance of somebody who has been at it for an hour. Live shells stay where they are, and that part is law rather than etiquette.

Captiva sits beyond it across Blind Pass, quieter again. North Captiva and Cayo Costa further on have no road to them at all. Cayo Costa is a state park with miles of white sand and almost nothing built on it, which is the version of this coast that photographs the way people imagine it.

By road the three are a morning of causeway and bridge. Say at the enquiry which of them the afternoon is built around and the ground transport or a boat pickup is arranged with the flight.

Downtown Fort Myers sits on the south bank of the Caloosahatchee and goes by the River District: a compact grid of restaurants, galleries and bars a few streets deep, with the river at the end of every one of them.

The address that made the city famous is a mile upstream. Thomas Edison bought land on the river in 1886 and built the winter house he called Seminole Lodge. Henry Ford bought the property next door in 1915 and built a bungalow he named The Mangoes.

The two estates open together as one museum and botanical garden of more than twenty acres, with over 1,700 plants and one of the largest banyan trees in the country.

They open daily from nine in the morning until half past five, with the last ticket sold an hour before closing, so an afternoon arrival still works and a late one does not. Guests who want a table rather than a garden book a fly and dine day and anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

If the day is about fish rather than swimming, this coast is a serious address, and the reason is one stretch of water. Boca Grande Pass, at the north end of Pine Island Sound between Cayo Costa and Gasparilla, has been called the tarpon capital of the world for the better part of a century.

The silver king is what put southwest Florida on the map as a fishing destination, and the season still fills the pass with boats. Behind the barrier islands the flats hold their own fishery, quieter and closer in, so parties book flats access for a half day and keep the afternoon free.

This coast has no Gulf Stream running past it, so the deep water sits further out than it does on the Atlantic side. That is exactly why the aircraft earns its keep here: it puts you on the right piece of water at the right hour instead of spending the morning getting to it. Rods and gear travel, within the payload for the aircraft on the day.

Pine Island Sound is the sheltered water behind the barrier islands, held between Pine Island on the mainland side and Sanibel, Captiva, North Captiva and Cayo Costa on the Gulf side. It is shallow, protected and almost always calmer than the open water outside it. That is what makes it the working water of this coast.

The boats run through it rather than around it, the dolphins are in it most days, and the sandbars inside it dry at low tide into open sand with nothing on them. A day out here is usually a beach picnic or a boat pickup if something is meeting your party on the water. Add water toys and the afternoon takes care of itself.

Two pieces of protected ground sit within minutes of the beach, and they are the answer when a party wants the coast without the crowd.

Lovers Key State Park lies just south of Estero Island and carries about two miles of undeveloped beach, with paddling trails through the mangroves behind it. Manatees, dolphins and bald eagles are resident rather than lucky, so it is the one address on this coast that naturalists name first.

Matanzas Pass Preserve is on the island itself, 57 acres of oak canopy and mangrove with a mile and a quarter of trail and boardwalk through it and a paddle landing on the Great Calusa Blueway. The Mound House on the same island is an archaeological site covering close to two thousand years, back through the Calusa who built the shell mound it stands on.

Cabbage Key is the island in the sound that has no bridge and no road to it. Every way onto it crosses water, which is the whole reason it is on this page rather than in a guidebook about driving the coast.

There is an inn on it with a restaurant, and lunch there and back inside an afternoon is the single clearest case on this coast for arriving by air and finishing the last stretch on the water.

The boat pickup is arranged with the flight rather than found on the day. Useppa Island next door is a private club and takes no visitors, so it is a look from above rather than a stop. Worth knowing before an afternoon gets planned around it.

Helicopter rides Miami Fort Myers also work as the first leg rather than the whole day. The same aircraft carries on north and south along the same shore to Naples, Sarasota and Tampa. That is what turns one city into island hopping along a coast that is mostly islands anyway.

Staying over changes the baggage rather than the route, and freight that follows later goes on island logistics. The full city guide sits on the Fort Myers destination page, the packaged version is the Fort Myers getaway day trip and the rest of the coast is on the Florida destinations page.