Big Cypress

Chris elected to stay on the boat and catch up with chores while I took Jamie and Alex to Big Cypress. Having managed to lose ourselves regularly on the previous couple of days in Miami I had Jamie in the front with me to navigate. The reason we got lost a lot is the interesting road names. Firstly there’s the numbered streets – 1st Street, 2nd Street etc -- and the identically numbered avenues. Streets go from east to west, avenues from north to south. That’s easy enough and fairly easy to work out if you haven’t got a map and are working your way back from the car rental place to the marina. What’s less obvious is that the city is mirror imaged around Miami Avenue and Flagler. So if you’re on the first street north of Flagler and east of Miami Avenue you’re on NE 1st Street; if you’re on the first street south of Flagler and east of Miami Avenue you’re on SE 1st Street; if you’re on the first street north of Flagler and west of Miami Avenue you’re on NW 1st Street; if you’re on the first street south of Flagler and west of Miami Avenue you’re on SW 1st Street. The same goes for the avenues. The uninitiated, who haven’t bothered with a map and can’t really see the sun, can end up a long way from their destination.

Naturally without the Captain at the helm (see Stardust), we managed to navigate our way easily onto the freeway system and were so in front of ourselves that we stopped at a supermarket and bought a picnic lunch. Usually we’re so late for everything that the only meal we eat at about the same time every day is breakfast.


Big Cypress is actually a freshwater swamp north of the Everglades and reaching to the west (Gulf) coast of Florida. In the wet season, it’s underwater (and full of bugs); in the dry season, it’s grass prairie and cypress woodland. We visited at the end of the dry season. Our first stop was the Ranger station to get orientated. The Ranger suggested the Kirby Storter boardwalk saying it was probably just as good as a hike and a great deal more comfortable. But first she said we should walk along the boardwalk outside the Ranger station itself and count the alligators – which we duly did, counting 47 of the beasties in a small creek about 100 yds long and 10 wide.


Bald Cypress trees spend half their time with the base of their trunks submerged in water so they have broad bases and they’ve adapted their root system and have “knees” to provide support and to help the tree breathe air. Like the rainforest, we saw a variety of air plants (epiphytes) growing in the branches of trees; unlike the rainforest this forest was much more similar to the ones we’re used to in the UK. We looked for the Florida panther, but we didn’t see anything but birds.


We talked to a “local” in the car park on the way out. She had visited this boardwalk a few years previously at this time and the land was already wet and that the Florida drought was very severe this year. That was about to change!

Back at the Ranger Station, Jamie and Alex completed the work necessary to get the second badge in their quest.

We got back to within a couple of blocks of the marina at 6pm, looking forward to dinner, to find it inaccessible because of a corporate fun run. It was about 9pm before we got back to the boat…