Everglades Day 3 - That's not hiking...

 I had a somewhat uncomfortable night in the tent... not because of the tent per se, but the mosquito bites that I had were excruciatingly itchy. Bear in mind that by this point I have been bitten probably over 1000 times and I'm not exaggerating...  I already had 20 to 30 bites on the back of each hand... and what is worse, when you try not to scratch, it becomes even more unbearable.... not good or conducive to a decent sleep. I had eventally started to doze off when I heard a thwump ing kinda sound... and then again.. and as I looked towards where the sound had come from on the outside of my tent and more squishy thwump came right by my head and there sillouetted was some kind of frog who had evidently jumped onto the tent and then slid downwards so jumped back up to start the process again... it was kinda funny and although part of me wanted to go and photograph the cute little thing, the other part of me had got settled in a non itchy position and didnt want to risk disturbing that... that part of me won and I never saw what kinda frog made the squishy thwump on my tent!

So I got up a little later than before... the sun was up and already reasonably warm, hot even.. at 0630 am!

My plan for today was to check out the trail behind the campsite that was going out towards the Bay. I wandered down to the start, keeping my eyes peeled for snakes (no such luck yet - live ones anyway)

On the way to the start of the trail, I saw a white phase version of the Great blue heron... massive things and one of the top predators in the Everglades. Apparently the white version was rarer and is easily confused with the egret.. to me they are both big white birds and look pretty similar.

I got to the trail and it looked promising for a good hike... Surrounded by foliage the path snaked around the pools of water... initially.. 

pretty soon, the path became a river that I was wading through. My boots are waterproof but obviously only up to the tops of the boots, and here, in places the water was considerably deeper than that. I waded through thinking that the Florida lot had a funny way of categorising stuff... in the UK we would call this swimming not hiking!!

Some of the pools were deceptively deep and occasionally I sank down to my knees int he water... it was kinda fun but equally I realised I didn't particularly want to continue this for 6 miles or so... and then back...

The view I got where I stopped was pretty spectacular... green waterlogged grass stretching out as far as the eye could see under a vivid blue sky with the odd white cloud. I stood and breathed in the air, the space, the freedom. It was vast this water filled land and the vastness seemed to pull me in, whispering to me stories of possibilities and adventures to be had... it is kind of magical this place.

I turned back my now water filled boots and headed back up the trail, having felt that the Everglades had started to pervade into my soul, as so many places have on my travels. A glorious celebration of life and nature is to be found here and so far it hasn't disappointed, despite the fcuking mosquitos that were doing their best to make me pack up and go! (In Summer, apparently, one gentleman came and camped in Flamingo for 5 nights... after just one night, he packed up his tent and left... I get that!)

 My hiking plan having been curtailed by water levels, I decided to go and spend the time actually on the water... and went back to the marina.

The manatees were not as active as they had been the other day and although I watched for a while, I didn't see any. I decided to wander roumd the other side of the marina and as I was on my return loop, I looked closely at the water on one of the slipways... 

There... just chillin out, just on the surface... was a crocodile... a real life... Steve Irwin kinda Croc!!! I was soooo excited. Words cannot describe how cool it was to actually find one of these in the wild (albeit in the marina, but hey... im not fussy where I find stuff!)

I estimated he was about 5ft long, maybe 6ft, but clearly reasonably young and nowhere near fully grown.  I could tell he was a croc and not a gator by both his colour (olive green/browny) but also by the fact I could see a lot of teeth. Gators are black in colour and you can only see their top teeth when their jaws are shut, as opposed to the crocs where you can see both upper and lower teeth.

He just sat there in the water, and I sat on the wall nearby, and we watched each other for a bit. Neither of us particularly scared of the other but me considerably. more excited about seeing him than the other way around. We stayed lile that for a while, until some power boat owner decided to get a bit close to him and dock nearby and he just slipped silently under the water and that was that.

Having seen him, I was stoked and I wondered if anything could top that this trip as I had gotten pretty close (a respectful close). Despite that, I went to book a trip on a boat out to Florida bay and some of the keys there.  It left pretty soon so I didn't have much time to wait.  Soon I was aboard and we were motoring out into the Bay, past another croc at the entrance to the marina. SOOO Cool!

The boat trip was interesting. Although the bay is massive, it is only 3 to 4 feet deep and all kinds of stuff can be seen there. The water is pretty murky, apparently it got like that after one of the hurricanes and hasn't recovered but we were lucky enough to spot some dolphins but too briefly to grab a photo. The keys (islands of mangrove essentially) were uninhabited by humans but were a sanctuary for all kinds of birds and other wildlife. I saw 2 bald eagles, one a juvenile, without the white head and an adult.... so impressively cool. We saw numerous herons, so many...

(For  those of you that haven't read my blogs of Ecuador and the Amazon trip I did, I saw so many herons there and it became a joke because I wanted to see reptiles and all I saw was herons... I must have seen every kind of sodding heron in the Americas... seriously...)

We saw the Great blue heron, the tricoloured heron, the (little) blue heron, the white phase of the Great blue heron... along with egrets and ibis and the odd pelican.. with the ever present vultures soaring above. If I liked birds a lot, I would have truly been in heaven here, but even not liking birds all that much, compared to reptiles, it was pretty impressive how many birds there were and the variety that could be found so easily.

It was soon time to turn back and we sped over the water back to the harbour. I looked for the croc but he had disappeared. 

It had been a great day and as I fired up my gas stove to make highly nutritious dinner of chicken noodles, I reflected as I often do, how lucky I am. Life felt as if it couldn't get more perfect...

I settled down in my tent and tried to ignore the whine of the mossies near my ear. I had doused myself in DEET with the hope that the buggers wouldn't bite me whilst asleep. I still hadn't perfected the art of unzipping my tent, getting myself in and my shoes off before then zipping up, quick enough to stop any more mossies getting in. I managed to get it quick enough to allow only a few dozen to slip in but that was easily enough to make sure that I woke up with more bites on me than I went to sleep with... they were definately winning!