Airboat, boat cruise, tram or kayak?
There's more than one door into the swamp. An airboat is the fastest way into the Everglades and the loudest, and also the most restricted, since airboats are banned in most of Everglades National Park. Boat cruises and the Shark Valley tram go where airboats cannot, and so do walking trails and kayaks. This guide compares them and shows how to fit two into one day.
Why the airboat is only one way in
An airboat is a flat-bottomed boat pushed by an aircraft-style propeller, so it skims water only inches deep and runs straight over the sawgrass. Nothing else crosses open marsh so quickly. It is also loud enough that crews hand out ear protection, and it is banned for visitors in most of Everglades National Park. The rides you can book run outside the park, some right beside it. Most use Miccosukee land or state-managed water areas, while a few businesses that were already running on the Tamiami Trail keep going as park concessions. Airboats and Everglades National Park explains how that came about.
Inside the park, that leaves the mangrove coast and Florida Bay to slower and quieter craft. The hammocks and boardwalks belong to people on foot. With a full day you can pair an airboat ride with one of them.
| Option | Where | Pace and noise | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airboat | Tamiami Trail, Broward west of Fort Lauderdale, the Naples side | Fast and loud; ear protection on most tours | Open sawgrass, gators along the channels, the thrill of the ride |
| Park-run boat tour | Flamingo on Florida Bay; Everglades City on the Gulf Coast | Calmer, on a conventional boat | Mangroves, open bay, the Ten Thousand Islands |
| Shark Valley tram | Tamiami Trail, inside the park | Slow, about two hours | A long look at the marsh, with an observation tower |
| Walking trails | Royal Palm, hammock trails, guided swamp walks | Your own pace, quiet | Birds at close range, photos |
| Kayak or canoe | Nine Mile Pond, mangrove tunnels, Turner River in Big Cypress | Silent, under your own power | Paddlers who want the swamp to themselves |
What the airboat does well
Speed and sawgrass. On Miami Everglades Connection's semi-private boat, from ~$82, you get an hour on the water with ten guests at most, and the captain can cut the engine to show you turtles and wading birds or a gator by the channel. Gator Park, from ~$37, fits a 35–40-minute narrated ride and a wildlife show into one stop on the Tamiami Trail. Nothing else gives you the wind and the spray, or the odd sense of sliding across a field of grass. The cost is noise. You hear the captain mostly when the engine drops to idle, and no ride can promise a sighting. What each one charges sits in what an Everglades airboat tour costs.
Boat cruises from Flamingo and Everglades City
The park has park-run boat tours at two corners of its map. At Flamingo, at the end of the road that starts at the Ernest F. Coe entrance near Homestead, they head out onto Florida Bay. On the Gulf Coast side, from Everglades City, they wind through mangroves toward the Ten Thousand Islands. These are conventional tour boats, much calmer than an airboat. They reach coastal water where airboats are not allowed. The coast is also home to most of Florida's American crocodiles, which live mainly around Florida Bay, though no cruise can promise one. Schedules and fares change, so check them with the park before you build a day around a cruise.
The tram and the bike loop at Shark Valley
Shark Valley sits right on the Tamiami Trail, the same road as several airboat ramps, which makes it the easiest thing to add to a ride out there. The tram takes about two hours around a 15-mile (24 km) loop road through open sawgrass, with a stop at an observation tower that looks out over the marsh. You can also bike the loop. The pace is slow enough to scan the canal edges for gators without an engine roaring behind you. The trade-off is that you see the marsh from a paved road and never skim across open water.
On foot, from boardwalks to swamp walks
The Anhinga Trail at Royal Palm, near the Ernest F. Coe entrance, is the park's classic short walk. It is named after the anhinga, a bird you may see drying its wings beside the path, and alligators sometimes rest within sight of it. Neither is guaranteed, but a quiet walker often gets closer than any boat. Guided swamp walks go a step further. You wade in behind a guide, which is about as close to the swamp as a visitor gets.
A walk through a tropical hardwood hammock is a different world from the open marsh. These are slightly raised islands of trees, where the ground stays drier and the shade keeps them cooler than the sawgrass around them. Wild Lime's naturalists lead their guests through one inside the park and explain the trees and plants as they go.
Paddling a kayak or canoe
A kayak is the airboat's opposite in every way. It is silent and slow, and every yard depends on your own arms. Nine Mile Pond, off the road to Flamingo, is a canoe trail through open marsh and mangrove. Mangrove tunnels, where branches close over the water, are a favorite with paddlers, and the Turner River in Big Cypress National Preserve is known for them. You sit low, at gator eye level. Some people love that, and others would rather not. Paddling also needs some stamina and serious sun protection, so it suits a cooler dry-season day better than a summer afternoon; the best time for an airboat ride covers the months.
Two in one day
The neatest combination is already packaged. Wild Lime Adventures' half day, from ~$189, collects you from hotels in Greater Miami and Fort Lauderdale and starts with a naturalist-led walk through a hammock inside the park. Then comes a one-hour airboat ride run by a Miccosukee family. Park entrance fees and binoculars are included, and the day takes about 5.5–6 hours. Some guests found the walk short, and the visit to a historic Miccosukee village after the ride is sometimes closed.
A naturalist's walk, then the airboat
Wild Lime pairs a guided walk inside Everglades National Park with an hour on a Miccosukee-run airboat, from ~$189, with hotel pickup and the park fees included. Children must be at least 4.
For the whole day, Wild Lime's full-day tour, from ~$295, adds a boat cruise to the hike and the airboat. Lunch and pickup are included. A biologist or naturalist leads the day. The catch is scale. At about 9 hours and ~$295 a head, nothing else here costs more or lasts longer, and its route changes when the water is low.
On the western side, Everglades Day Safari's Western Everglades Adventure Tour, from ~$100, pairs a one-hour airboat ride with a nature walk and a reptile program over about four hours. Its catch is distance, since it starts from the Fort Myers and Naples area at least two hours from Miami.
Doing it yourself works too. Shark Valley and the Tamiami Trail ramps share the same road. By car, you can fit the tram loop and a ride at a ramp into one day. Where the airboats launch places each ramp on that road.
Which one suits you
- You want speed and spray. An airboat, and the semi-private boats get you closest to the marsh;
- You want birds without an airboat's roar. The Anhinga Trail or the Shark Valley tram;
- You want the coast. A park-run boat tour from Flamingo or Everglades City;
- You want to do the work. A kayak or canoe, ideally in the dry season;
- You travel with small children. A short ride plus a show, as airboat rides with kids explains.