Seaplane from Miami to Marathon Florida

Most come for the water first. Sombrero Reef lies a few miles off the ocean side of Marathon, a spur and groove reef inside the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and shallow enough that snorkellers and divers are looking at the same coral from different depths.

The marker above it is the Sombrero Key lighthouse, an iron pile tower finished in 1858 and the tallest of the reef lights in the Keys. It was automated in 1960 and switched off for good in 2015, so it now stands over the reef as a landmark rather than as a working light.

The reef work itself happens from the island rather than from the aircraft. The boats leave from the harbours in Marathon, minutes from where the seaplane sets you down, so half a day in the water and a long lunch ashore both fit inside the same visit.

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 rather than swimming, Marathon is one of the serious addresses in Florida. It is serious in three different directions at once. On the Gulf side the backcountry flats hold tarpon, bonefish and permit in shin deep water. The bridges either side of town hold tarpon of their own through the spring.

A few miles out on the ocean side the bottom falls away into blue water and the day becomes mahi, tuna and reef fishing over snapper and grouper. 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.

Marathon is the part of the Keys that works with children along, because three of its best known places are on land and within a few minutes of each other. The Turtle Hospital at mile marker 48.5 is a working rescue and rehabilitation centre rather than an attraction built around one.

Its guided tour runs about ninety minutes behind the scenes. The Dolphin Research Center sits at the northern end on Grassy Key. Crane Point in the middle of town is 63 acres of hardwood hammock with a museum and a nature centre inside it.

None of the three needs a boat or a tide, which is what makes them the reliable half of a day here. A car at the dock turns all three into one afternoon.

The Seven Mile Bridge leaves the western end of Marathon. Beside the road bridge stands the old one. It was built for Henry Flagler's Over-Sea Railroad, the line that reached Key West in 1912. It is the reason the Keys are a place you can drive to at all.

A 2.2 mile stretch of it reopened in January 2022 after a 44 million dollar restoration and is now walked, run and cycled out over open water. It ends at Pigeon Key, five acres carrying eight buildings on the National Register of Historic Places: the camp that housed the men who built the bridge, kept as it was.

It is the one thing here that is neither a beach nor a boat. It is the reason a good number of guests come back a second time.

The Keys are not a beach coast, which is exactly why the two proper beaches in Marathon matter. Sombrero Beach at the end of Sombrero Beach Road is free and open from sunrise to sunset, with shaded pavilions, grills and a kayak launch. Turtles nest along it in season.

Curry Hammock State Park a few minutes north is over a thousand acres of shoreline and hammock and it is the quiet alternative to the famous park further south. Its flats are shallow enough to wade. Add water toys if the party wants the afternoon on the water rather than on the sand, or a beach picnic if the point of the day is a table nobody else is sitting at.

Boot Key Harbor is the reason Marathon feels like a working sea town rather than a resort strip. It is one of the largest protected harbours in the Keys and the city runs a mooring field of 226 balls inside it, first come first served, no reservations.

It fills around Thanksgiving and generally stays full into the middle of February, which tells you most of what you need to know about the season here: the boats come for the winter and they stay.

If a boat of yours is in the harbour or anchored off, the aircraft can set the party down alongside instead of at a pier. That is a yacht transfer. A dock pickup covers the version where the boat comes to you.

Past the far end of the Seven Mile Bridge the water opens again at Bahia Honda, wide white sand on both the Atlantic and the Gulf side with the broken arc of the old railroad bridge standing behind it. It is named among the best beaches in Florida about as often as anywhere in the state.

Beyond it lies Big Pine Key and the lower chain. By road that is another bridge and another queue. By air it is minutes, which is the whole argument for arriving in the middle of the Keys rather than at one end of them.

A private seaplane charter Miami to Marathon also works as the first leg rather than the whole day. The same aircraft carries on north to Islamorada and Key Largo or south to Key West and the Dry Tortugas, seventy miles past the last road.

That is what turns one island into island hopping. Overnight changes the baggage rather than the route. The full island guide sits on the Marathon destination page, the packaged version is the Marathon getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Florida Keys destinations page.