Saturday, November 18, 2006

Matlacha - February 2002 for my 50th

Matlacha is a small island west of Fort Myers and just east of Pine Island. To the west of Pine Island is Sanibel, Captiva, and Caya Costa Islands.

For info on the Pine Island area.....
on the Lee Island Coast area

Some of the things we did:
  • rented a canoe at Lover's Key State Park and paddled inland water
  • took a guided boat tour around the islands, stopping on North Captiva for lunch. Just after lunch it started to rain - the first rain since we'd arrived 6 days before. We stopped on Cayo Costa Island - a state park - and walked with our raingear on. We saw a large number of dolphins swimming near or in front of our tour boat.
  • took a drive on Sanibel Island but found it too crowded and although the beaches looked white, the sand was very rough, nothing like the soft sand of the Florida panhandle. We did watch the sunset on one of the beaches and saw a baby dolphin in the water.
  • Babcock Wilderness Adventure - we took a guided mountain bike tour on very undemanding and flat terrain. We saw alligators in the wild, simply floating in the water under a wooden bridge. They looked completely unthreatening and came closer to the bridge to check us out - looking very curious.
  • took a guided kayak tour of the mangroves on Matlacha and saw manatees. The canoe and kayak rental and guided tour operator located on Matlacha is Gulf Coast Kayak

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