Helicopter from Miami to Little Palm Island

There is nothing on the island except the resort: thirty thatched bungalow suites in fifteen houses, never more than sixty guests at once, no road and no cars. Quiet at that level has to be arranged rather than found. The last leg is always water, whichever aircraft brought you down the chain. The resort runs its own launch from the shore station at mile marker 28.5, hourly on the half hour from half past eleven in the morning until half past nine at night, and the run across takes about a quarter of an hour. A party meeting its own boat instead books a dock pickup or a yacht transfer. Either way it is the one part of the day that belongs to the water rather than to the aircraft, so it is worth naming when you send the date.

The reef is why parties come this far south rather than stopping halfway. Looe Key lies about four nautical miles below the harbour, inside the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and part of the third largest barrier reef system in North America. In the water that means spurs of coral standing in seven to thirty feetwith sand valleys running between them, more than fifty species of coral and over a hundred and fifty species of fish. It is shallow enough that snorkellers and divers see the same thing from different depths. The reef is worked from a boat rather than from the air, and the boats leave from the island. Say how many are swimming when you send the date, and say whether anyone is diving rather than snorkelling. Add water toys if the party wants the afternoon on the water rather than on the sand.

The harbour the island sits in is an aquatic preserve, so the water around it is shallow, clear and slow. None of it is open ocean: pale sand, turtle grass and channels a tender can read at a glance. That is what makes the afternoon easy to build here. A beach picnic goes on the sand, a boat that wants to meet the party has water it can sit in, and nobody spends an hour getting anywhere. Low water sets the hour for the sandbars rather than the one you would prefer, which is the single part of the day the sea decides instead of you.

A few keys east of the harbour, Bahia Honda carries the beach that photographs best in the Lower Keys and the broken span of the old Flagler railroad bridge standing beside the modern one. It is a state park, so the beach is public and the water on the ocean side shelves gently. Parties who want an hour off the island without a reef trip usually end up here, and it works as a stop rather than as a day of its own. From a helicopter it is the clearest thing on the whole run down. The two bridges stand side by side across the same channel, one of them broken and one of them carrying the traffic, and you pass them low and slow a few minutes before the end. It is the point at which most guests work out how narrow this chain really is.

Big Pine Key sits immediately east of Little Torch Key and it carries the National Key Deer Refuge. The deer are a subspecies found nowhere else and they are small enough that the first sighting is usually mistaken for a large dog. The refuge is pine rockland and freshwater holes rather than beach, which makes it the odd hour on a trip otherwise spent in the water. Ground transport is arranged for parties who want to go ashore rather than stay on the boat, and anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

North of the island the water turns into the backcountry: miles of flats, mangrove islands and channels that only shallow boats reach. Bonefish, permit and tarpon live in there, and it is why this stretch of the Lower Keys has the reputation it has. Parties who come for that book bonefishing and flats access or a full fishing day. Rods and gear travel, within the payload for the aircraft on the day, so they are named when you book rather than carried to the pad and hoped for.

The island keeps a dining room, and it is the reason a good number of these flights are overnight rather than day trips. A table there is worth an evening, and an evening is worth more than the hour it costs to get home. Either the party stays the night or the return is planned around the meal rather than squeezed in before it. Both work, and both are decided when you book rather than on the day, because the aircraft is held for you and has nowhere else to be. A party that wants the table without the night usually flies a fly and dine day instead.

Helicopter rides Miami Little Palm Island also work as the middle of a day rather than the whole of it. The same aircraft carries on to Key West, the Dry Tortugas, Islamorada or Big Pine Key, and Marathon sits halfway up the chain at mile marker 50. That is what turns one island into island hopping or a wider scenic flight down the Keys. 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. Anything larger than luggage is island logistics. The full island guide is on the Little Palm Island destination page, the packaged version is the Little Palm Island getaway and the chain is on the Florida Keys destinations page.