Garl's Coastal Kayaking — Local services in Florida City

My wife and I were on a week-long vacation to explore the Miami area, starting with the keys, moving to the Everglades, and then into Miami. We had spent a day in the Everglades on our own and decided we wanted to find an airboat for a second day. While searching, I somehow found Garl's website. The description sounded interesting, and the price is very reasonable for a full-day tour.

This was the highlight of our trip. The group met at the appointed spot outside the Everglades, and we followed Garl into the park in our cars while he drove his car and pulled a trailer with the kayaks. The first stop was to see an alligator he somehow noticed as we drove down the road. Because of the high water when we were there, the alligators were spread out and not always easy to find.

The second stop was for about an hour and a half, where we parked along the main road, followed Garl into the water, and waded through the Cypress trees and other growth. The water was high during our trip and was at the top of my legs. He pointed out the different plants and a few animals we saw and explained the cycle of the Everglades through the wet and dry seasons.

Next, we stopped at a small pond that resulted from them digging out limestone to build the road, where we launched the kayaks. We spent about an hour doing freshwater kayaking through the mangroves. It was a maze through the growth, and sometimes, we were paddling through a tunnel as the trees completely grew over the small channel we were following. We saw one alligator here.

The final stop was at the Flamingo to launch the kayaks again for some saltwater paddling. I think we spent at least two hours paddling here and returned to the marina after dark because of the short December days. We paddled into Snakebite, hoping to see flamingos, but we had no luck. However, we saw plenty of other wildlife, including a crocodile, several sharks, lots of birds, and a big tarpon that, for some reason felt the need to visit the kayak of everyone on our trip and splash them.

Highly recommended if you are up for an adventure and can physically...

100% worth the money. The first time we went to the Everglades, we made the mistake of only renting kayaks from Garl and trying to DIY the park the whole day. We've been to many National Parks and felt confident we could get around. We were wrong. We got stuck in the rain, we could find several trails, we got stuck in the high tide and hardly saw any animals. So we were determined to go back to the Everglades one day and do the full day tour with Garl and "do it right". When we went back with Garl, we saw stuff we definitely wouldn't have found on our own. Garl can't force nature to show up for a show, but he knows the park so well, he has names for most the animals we go find. He knows where they live, he knows how to give them respect and to just observe from a distance. He was fantastic. We saw more alligators than we can count, a massive flock of pink "flamingo" birds, little sharks and a 14 ft crocodile. He even included a bonus night tour where we saw soooo many gators and learned so much about the animals and the environment. Garl has been doing this for so many years, and you can tell that he absolutely loves it. He's like a little kid at heart, just happy to be outdoors. I now tell my family members that if they are visiting the Everglades, honestly don't waste time looking anywhere else. Just go to Garl and see the park...

Had a great full-day tour with Mike as our guide. It was like being in a nature documentary straight out of National Geographic.

We saw tons of animals and plants, truly in the wild, and learned so much about the ecology and history of the park throughout the day. Mike was an extremely knowledgeable and fun guide, more than happy to answer all of our questions, and he constantly spotted animals and plants that would've gone totally unseen had we been there alone. And make no mistake -- I don't think we could've done any part of this day on our own; it mostly consisted of random stop-off points to walk into the wilderness where Mike knew about certain ecological features and high likelihood to see animals.

We saw gators, a crocodile, osprey, manatees, brown snakes, a soft-shell turtle, tons of lizards, air plants, and lots of fish. 100% recommend if you want to experience the true nature of the Everglades - just be prepared to get a bit dirty while doing it, but there's truly no way to really get out and experience the nature of the Everglades without doing so!

Oh, and Mike took tons of photos with his camera + telescopic lens that he sent to us (for free) so we walked away with super high quality pics to remember the experience by. Can't recommend this tour enough if you have a sense of adventure and are...