Private Jet 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 its whole length and shelves so gently that the water stays shallow a long way out, which is why this 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 running out. Bowditch Point sits at the tip, quieter, and Crescent Beach in the middle has fewer people. A jet lands at Page Field on the mainland, and the island is a drive across the bridge, booked with the flight. Say how many are swimming with the date and whether you want water toys waiting.

Sanibel is why people who know this coast keep coming back. 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 gave the language the Sanibel Stoop. Live shells stay where they are, and that is law rather than etiquette. Captiva sits beyond it across Blind Pass, quieter again. North Captiva and Cayo Costa have no road to them at all. Cayo Costa is a state park with miles of white sand and almost nothing built on it. From the field the first two are causeway and bridge, the other two a boat. Say 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: restaurants, galleries and bars a few streets deep, with the river at the end of each. It is minutes from the apron. The address that made the city famous is a mile upstream. Thomas Edison bought land on the river in 1886 and built Seminole Lodge; Henry Ford bought next door in 1915 and named his bungalow The Mangoes. The two estates open together as one museum and garden of more than twenty acres, with over 1,700 plants and one of the largest banyan trees in the country. They open at nine and close at half past five, so an afternoon arrival works and a late one does not. Guests who want a table, not a garden, book a fly and dine day and anything outside the list goes to custom requests.

If the day is about fish rather than swimming, 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, so the deep water sits further out than on the Atlantic side. A jet puts you here at the hour the boat is leaving rather than at the end of a drive. Rods and gear travel, within the payload 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 clearest case on this coast for crossing the state in the morning and finishing the last stretch on the water. The boat pickup is arranged with the flight rather than found on the day, and a bigger boat meeting the party is a yacht transfer. Useppa Island next door is a private club and takes no visitors, so it is a name on the chart rather than a stop. Worth knowing before an afternoon gets planned around it.

A private jet charter from Miami to Fort Myers also works 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.