Sightseeing tour of the Florida Everglades
Take a trip to the Everglades, a true natural wonder

While you are in South Florida, you are only minutes away from one of the most amazing wildlife preserves in the world. Comparable to the great barrier reef of Australia, the plains of the Serengeti, or the dunes of the Sahara, the marshlands of the Everglades are a vast and unique ecosystem full of wonder and danger. Beautiful pristine nature, world class bird watching, alligators, crocodiles, panthers, snakes, birds, and fish, in an endless array of diversity, all call the everglades their home.

Nicknamed “the river of grass”, the Everglades are the largest subtropical wilderness in the USA, spanning coast to coast from the center of Florida to the southern tip of the peninsula. Renown for having the most extensive continuous system of mangroves in the world, this national treasure is not truly a swamp as many people believe, but a river, and debatably the widest river in the world for that matter, measuring up to an estimated 115 miles at its widest point, and 60 miles wide at its narrowest point. This fact, in addition to the slow moving shallow water, make the environment warmer, with extensive areas of sweet water, brackish and salt water creating a unique series of habitats. It is the most important breeding ground for wading birds in the American continent, the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles exist side by side, and is a refuge to 14 endangered species and 9 threatened species, including manatees, turtles, wading birds, the American crocodile, and the Florida panther. Its fascinating, delicate, and diverse ecosystem has earned the Everglades the UNESCO designation as a World Heritage Site.

A rare greenish yellow water plant known as Sawgrass, grows in abundance in the Everglades, a very simple and appropriate name, since it has serrated bladed edges that can cut like a saw. The growth is sometimes so dense you cannot see the water underneath it. Some of the largest Sawgrass prairies in the world are in the Everglades, and that is precisely where the name came from. In old English, the word ‘glade’ means a clearing in a forest, like a patch of grass without trees. ‘Ever-Glades’, as it was named in 16th century maps, was descriptive of the Sawgrass plains out to the horizon.