Crocodiles
Last night we attended the ranger tour, a walk along the Anhinga trail by flashlight. We were able to see a lot of animals, alligators, toads, fish and birds including the name sake of the trail. The alligators were visible because their eyes reflect the light of the flashlight. The most interesting viewing was when someone noticed a satellite train. Starlink recently deployed satellites and the sky was clear enough for us to see them. Even our guide thought that was the most interesting thing we saw!
This morning, Greg thought it would be a good idea to go kayaking. Amy wasn’t so sure that kayaking among alligators or crocodiles was a good idea, so we agreed to ask a ranger about the dangers. The ranger said the only danger was falling into the water. When we pressed her about alligators and crocodiles, the ranger said, “There’s nothing to worry unless you hit one with your paddle”. The ranger gave us a map of places to explore by kayak or canoe, and she made several recommendations. Clearly, kayaking in the Everglades is A Thing. The only issue was that the water level is currently too low in Nine Mile Pond, one of the locations that Greg scoped out.
Before we got to the ranger station, the fog was pretty thick. Not great for seeing our way around the water. Luckily, we had “Guy” from the GuideAlong audio tour. (That’s not his real name, but it’s what we call him). He recommended a couple of quick walks - each took about 10 minutes. Our first walk was at Pinelands, a pine tree forest. Florida pine tree forests were easy to clear for farming, which makes this area important to preserve.
Our second walk was at Mahogany Hammock. A hammock, in this sense, is a land area which is slightly higher than its surroundings which makes it drier and easier for hardwoods to grow. According to “Guy”, this hammock has the largest mahogany tree in the US, though we didn’t see which one since there was no sign. We couldn’t guess which one because many mahogany trees were very tall. There were a few downed trees, probably from hurricanes. We could see the root system was incredibly shallow, which makes sense since the water table is so high.
Also along the road, we saw this sign for Rock Reef Pass. Those of us from the west had to laugh at the Florida definition of a pass.
Back to the kayaking. The ranger at the Flamingo station recommended a couple of routes. We were close to two, one was the bay and the other was a saltwater channel through a mangrove forest. We decided to try the mangrove channel. The channel was just over 3 miles to a creek that looked more like a lake. It continued a lot further, but we decided to turn around near the end of that channel. We were so close to a 10k, so Greg paddled just a bit further. There were plenty of other kayakers and canoers along the way. We shared the channel with motor boats, who, with one exception, all slowed down around us to reduce the wake. The paddlers all helped each other spot wildlife. We saw two crocodiles. The Everglades are the only ecosystem where alligators and crocodiles coexist. You can tell the difference in a few ways. First, gators live in fresh water while crocs live in salt or brackish water. Gators have a flatter snout while crocs have a triangular snout. And of course, they have different greetings: alligators say “See you later” while crocodiles say “After a while.” The American Crocodile is endangered; there are only about 2000 of them left. As a result, it’s illegal to hunt American Crocodiles. It’s also illegal to hunt an alligator, mostly to make sure you aren’t hunting a crocodile by mistake.
Our paddle trip started a little later than we had hoped, mostly because of the fog, and we went further than we had planned. So we returned tired, in the heat of the day. Our afternoon consisted of chilling at the campground. Even Greg relaxed!
