Seaplane from Miami to Big Pine Key

The National Key Deer Refuge covers 8,542 acres across Big Pine Key and No Name Key and it was set up in 1957 for one animal. The Key deer is the smallest subspecies of the North American white-tailed deer and it lives in the Lower Keys and nowhere else in the world. Hunting and lost habitat had taken the population under fifty animals by the 1940s.

It stands at roughly eight hundred today and about three quarters of them live on these two islands, so the deer walk through gardens and along the roadsides here in a way they do nowhere else. The refuge asks visitors not to feed them, because a deer that loses its fear of people ends up on the highway.

Nothing about this needs booking. It is a slow drive or a slow walk at either end of the day, which fits a flight that lands you on the island rather than an hour away from it.

Looe Key lies about six miles offshore of Big Pine Key and Ramrod Key and it is the reason divers know this stretch. It is a classic spur and groove reef: fingers of coral running seaward with white sand channels between them, in seven to thirty feet of water.

It carried its own federal protection before it was folded into the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The name comes from the British frigate HMS Looe, which went aground here in February 1744.

The reef work happens from the island rather than from the aircraft. Boats run out from the Lower Keys marinas, minutes from where the seaplane sets you down. Say how many are swimming when you send the date and say whether anyone is diving rather than snorkelling: a dive boat and a snorkel boat are not always the same boat.

If the day is about fish, this is one of the better addresses in the chain. Coupon Bight and the shallows around Newfound Harbor sit straight off the south side and the backcountry opens out to the north, so both kinds of fishing start within minutes of the island.

That is why parties book bonefishing and flats access or a full fishing day by seaplane. Rods and gear travel, within the payload for the aircraft on the day.

Bahia Honda State Park is at mile marker 37, a few minutes east by road and it is the beach the Lower Keys are known for. The park covers 524 acres with three separate beaches on it, which is unusual in a chain where most shoreline is rock or mangrove.

The old Flagler railroad bridge still stands over the water at the end of it, which is what most people photograph. The park opens at eight in the morning and closes at sundown, so it fits a day that starts with an early departure from Miami rather than a late one.

At low water the banks on the south side dry into open sand with nothing on them, which is where a boat afternoon usually ends up. That is where a beach picnic goes. Add water toys if the party wants the afternoon on the water rather than on the sand, or a dock pickup if a boat is meeting you.

Low water decides the hour, not the one you would prefer. It is the single part of a day here that is set by the sea rather than by the aircraft. Worth saying with the date, because it moves the afternoon rather than the flight.

The Blue Hole is the only freshwater lake in the Florida Keys and it is not natural. It is a quarry, dug for rock when the Overseas Railroad and later the highway were built. It filled with rainwater afterwards. It sits inside the refuge and it is where the wildlife drinks, so alligators, turtles, wading birds and the deer all turn up at the same edge of the water.

The trails around it run through pine rockland, a habitat that survives in the Keys only here and on a handful of neighbouring islands. Guests who want a table rather than a trail book a fly and dine day. Anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

No Name Key is one bridge east and it is where the island runs out. The wooden bridge to it was destroyed by the hurricane of 1948 and then by fire. The concrete one that stands today only went in in 1967, so the island spent most of a century cut off.

The pub at the end of the road goes back to 1931, when it was a general store and a bait and tackle shop. It is the one address on these two islands that everybody names and the deer walk past the car park while you eat.

A seaplane charter from Miami to Big Pine Key also works as one leg rather than the whole day. The same aircraft carries on west to Key West and the Dry Tortugas, or back east to Marathon and Islamorada. Just west of here, Little Palm Island sits off Little Torch Key and is reached the same way, by water rather than by road.

That is what turns one island into island hopping. Overnight changes the baggage rather than the route. If a boat is meeting you, the aircraft can set the party down alongside instead of at a pier. That is a yacht transfer and it is the reason a good number of these flights happen at all.

The full island guide sits on the Big Pine Key destination page, the packaged version is the Big Pine Key getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Florida Keys destinations page.