Private Jet from Miami to Everglades

Both animals live here and this is the only place they do. The American alligator holds the fresh water of the interior, the American crocodile the brackish and salt water of the coast and the mangrove fringe, and the Everglades is the one stretch of the world where the two ranges overlap. That overlap sits almost exactly where the day ends up. The coast at Everglades City is crocodile water, the sawgrass you crossed on the way in is alligator country, and a boat out of town moves from one to the other in an afternoon. It is the single thing guests come away talking about. The aircraft has no part in that. The jet lands at Marco Island and the car covers the road, so the whole of the day at this end is spent on the water rather than getting to it.

The airboat is the picture everyone has of this place and it is a fair one: flat bottom, no draught, straight over grass and water at the same speed. They run from the Gulf coast side as well as from the highway. The quieter half is the backcountry skiff, which goes further and slower into the mangrove tunnels and the oyster bars where an airboat has no business being. Both leave from within a few minutes of the town, so the choice is made on the day rather than at the enquiry. Ground transport covers the road from the apron to whichever dock you are leaving from.

South of Chokoloskee the coast breaks into mangrove keys, hundreds of them, running south for miles with channels and oyster bars between them. No road goes there and that is the point of them. It is the second largest mangrove forest in the world after the Sundarbans. On the ground it is a boat day, out through the passes and back on the tide, which is a day that needs its hours. That is the argument for flying: two hours of road each way is most of the daylight, and a jet gives it back. 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 concentrate around it in their highest numbers of the year. That is why the month matters more here than the hour. Herons, egrets and ibis are present all year, but in February they are standing in the same few hundred yards of water rather than 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 itself is small and old and takes about ten minutes to walk. The Museum of the Everglades, the old courthouse, the Bank of Everglades and the Rod and Gun Club all date from the 1920s, and the park's western visitor centre sits at the water rather than at a trailhead, which tells you how people arrive here. Chokoloskee lies three miles further out along a causeway, at the literal end of the road, and the seafood houses between the two are the reason a good number of parties book the day at all. The town calls itself the stone crab capital of the world and means it. 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 you can see the bottom of. Rods and gear travel, and on a jet the payload question that decides it on a smaller aircraft does not really come up. Parties book the boat and the guide for the hours they want, and the aircraft waits rather than fixing the hour you come off the water.

The interior is the part 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 whole system is built on. It is also what lies between the two ends of this flight. From the road it is a green wall for two hours; from the air it reads as a landscape rather than a swamp, with cypress domes, tree islands, the slow braid of channels and the straight line of the old road cutting across all of it. A jet crosses it high and fast, which is the trade: you give up the low pass a scenic flight is for, and you get the afternoon.

A private jet charter from Miami to Everglades also works as the first leg rather than the whole day. The aircraft is already at Marco Island, so Naples and Fort Myers are up the same coast, and the Florida Keys are south east across the bay. That is what turns one stop into island hopping or a wider Florida day. Overnight changes the baggage rather than the route. 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.