These days we have been extremely busy with work, that’s why we haven’t been updating the blog as frequently. Now we are in Monterrey, Mexico but we won’t be talking about that yet. We want to share with you the wonderful experience we had in the Florida Everglades last Wednesday while we were in Miami, USA.

The Everglades is a unique wetland ecosystem in southern Florida, USA, and it is one of the world’s largest and slowest moving river. It was formed over thousands of years from the overflow of heavy rainfall into Lake Okeechobee and covers 5,000 square miles. It is known as the River of Grass because of its predominance of sawgrass. The lush vegetation of the Everglades also consists of mangrove, cypress, palms, pines and hardwood hammocks. The Everglades is known for its rich wildlife - hundreds of bird species, alligators, crocodiles, black bears, the endangered Florida panther, marine life can all be found here. It is the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles can be found to co-exist together.

Airboat

We went on an airboat ride through the Everglades and found it to be a great refreshing change from urban cities. The airboat is a good way of exploring and observing the wildlife - the propeller is situated above the boat so there’s no harm to marine animals as it moves along the slow-moving swamp.

Adult and young alligators, turtles, various species of egrets, herons, including the great blue heron - we saw them all here in the wild. It would have been great to be able to stay in the Everglades for a few days to absorb all the beauty but the only accommodation there was destroyed by a hurricane two years ago.

There are over 200,000 alligators in the Everglades and 1.5 million in the state of Florida. The American crocodile is given an endangered status here while the alligator is classified as threatened.

The great blue heron is the biggest wading bird in the Everglades

 

Wild alligator

 

Big white egret

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Miami. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.