Swamp Things

Coming out of the Everglades, without showering for three days, my hands were blistered and felt like claws from the paddling, I was feverish and aching all over.

But man, did we have an amazing time!

I spent three nights in the mango swamps there with friends from New York, Stacey and Jason. We were in a canoe and a kayak, and did a round trip of about 50 miles, the first part of which was on the ocean and the second in the 'backwaters', the complex waterways inland. The first night was on the beach, alone, where we built a huge bonfire. On the second day, we were paddling towards Shark River to get into the backwaters when suddenly behind us, a huge dark fin rose out of the water. Yeah! I thought. A shark. I'd wanted to see one. It went under. Then it came back up again, a lot closer.
"Stace!" I yelled. "Maybe we should hug the shore more!"
As it turned out later, they were not sharks but dolphins. And we saw a lot: playing around us in groups, or fishing in pairs.

After the night on the beach, we had booked space on 'chickees', simple wooden platforms on posts in the water which provide a campsite (its impossible to get out in the dense mangrove swamps). The second day, after the 'shark' sighting, we misjudged our speed and were a way away from the chickee as the sun was setting. It was a tense but beautiful experience to be paddling as the sun was setting: crazy colours in the sky and suddenly flocks of pelicans and other birds filling the skies. We ended up in the almost complete dark (no moon, and cloudy skys) navigating our ways by the stars. Luck was on our side: the group already in the chickee had tiki torches we could see through the mangroves, and we found it from their light. It was about 8pm when we arrived.



Most of the expected swamp things stayed away: we saw only one real shark, one alligator (and he was the show alligator to the side of the park's main camp) and were attacked by mosquitoes and gnats but not eaten alive by them as we'd feared, so the 10 dollars I'd spent on th bee-keeping hat were wasted, apart from this great fashion shot by Stacey.