My Everglades Holiday Park Experience | Everglades Holiday Park Airboat Tour | Miami to Everglades

Hey there everyone my name is Eduardo Arroyo but you can call me Ed and today I am taking an airboat tour here at the Everglades at Everglades Holiday Park here in Florida. Yes you guys you heard that right I am currently here at Everglades Holiday Park a really popular destination here in Florida to experience the Everglades. I did not bring a car to Florida so I decided to purchase a tour package to experience this place. My main goal for today is to see an alligator in the wild and also to experience the beautiful scenery of the Everglades. That is something that I told myself that if I ever visited Florida I wanted to do and today is the day so if that interests you come with me. All right you guys so before we can enjoy the airboat tour of the Everglades I think that's what we all want to see right? We first have to make our way over to the park. The tour package that I got does include transportation to the park and back here that is very convenient if you're staying here in Miami and don't want to drive too far. I am currently here in downtown as you can see by the high rises in the close vicinity. Check out that one that's the tallest one right here. Overall really nice views from here. I am currently making my way over to the Bayside Marketplace that is where the buzz will be departing from and where you can redeem your tickets. Check it out you guys we have just arrived here at the Bayside Marketplace. It's these buildings in the distance and I think that might be our bus. Big Bus Tours are the ones who will be managing our bus for today's tour so I need to find their office to redeem my ticket. Check it out you guys Big Bus Tours has a little booth set up here. I think this is where you check in and redeem your ticket. All right you guys so with that out of the way we simply have to wait for a departure time which is 9 a.m. I am so excited I cannot wait to make my way over to the park. We have our wristband ready and we can finally go in. And just like that we were on our way. In the meantime I wanted to address some things I saw online. When looking for tours to the Everglades I noticed that most have a fair amount of negative reviews specifically related to the transportation aspect. With some saying that the bus arrived late, the drive taking extra long due to traffic, the bus being dirty and old and even people saying that buses have broken down before. All of these comments made me a bit hesitant to book my tour mainly because this is a limited time experience. The bus arrives at a specific time and leaves at a specific time so if you arrive late to the park you have less time at the park. Ultimately I figured that it would be useful to others for me to share my experience. Our bus did arrive 30 minutes later than scheduled which confused me so there I was calling the company and asking people if they were waiting for the same bus as I was. Traffic wasn't bad I decided to take the first bus so we left early in the morning however I assume traffic gets worse later in the day. The conditions of the bus were fine I don't think they're the cleanest but my expectations are always low in this department. And thankfully the bus did not break down and we got some really cool views as we made our way to the park. Alright you guys check it out we have just arrived here at Everglades Holiday Park. I'm gonna go in and see what we can do first. Alright you guys we have been called we're heading over to the airboats right now. If you're thinking that was fast he didn't show the surroundings it's because I didn't have time. Not even five minutes after we arrived it was already our turn to go on the airboat so we didn't get time to check out the food places nor the gift shop. This might not be a big deal for most but I like to take my time. Anyways here we are waiting in line making our way to the airboats which look so cool check them out. After a bit of waiting we were on and ready to go. No smoking and if I see any wildlife doesn't matter what it is I'll show one side spin the boat and show the opposite. Now for you guys a cool thing about this experience is that you will see people from all over the world. In our boat there were people from Europe, Africa and of course all over the state of Florida. Slowly but surely we made our way off the dock. Here you can see other airboats doing the same thing. Our guide did warn us to tightly hold our phones and cameras because if you drop them they are gone. No way to get them back. With that knowledge we were off. Right away we were introduced to a very cool dynamic of the tour. Speed trails. Basically this is when the guide drives the boat as fast as possible. It's a really fun and intense way to experience the Everglades. I have to say even if it's going fast you do feel safe all throughout so don't fear you are safe. Throughout the tour our guide gave us quick bites of information about the park, the basics of the tour as I explained earlier and of course information about the flora and fauna of this place. The two plants that give the Everglades their iconic look in my opinion are the cattail grass and the spatter dock plant. Cattail grass is easily identifiable. It just looks like grass. It does have an important job though as it is the filtration system of the Everglades, filtering natural and man-made toxins keeping this place clean for animals to live here. Although it looks like solid pieces of land, cattail grass does not grow straight from the ground. It is actually held together by chunks of dirt which float above the water so these can move. If a section of the dirt breaks off it can either drift off on its own or open new paths through the Everglades. Then we have the spatter dock plant which is often confused with a water lily. You can see those in close vicinity of the cattail grass. Spatter dock plants are different than water lilies in some key ways. First off, water lilies lie flat on the water surface while the spatter dock plant sticks out a few inches above the water. Second, the leaf of the water lily is more round almost like a perfect circle while the leaf in the spatter dock plant is oval shaped. Lastly, the water lily produces a white flower while the spatter dock plant produces a yellow flower. Alright, time for the second speed trail of the day you guys. Hold tight! As far as animals, Everglades Holiday Park is home to a myriad of species including fish like the crappie and the largemouth bass, birds like turkey vultures, eagles and egrets and reptiles such as turtles, snakes and of course alligators. Alligators are usually spotted on land and not in the water so don't expect an alligator to come close by the boat. They do spend majority of their life in the water but every day they must come out to land. They sleep and rest on land as they take in the sun so that is the perfect time to get a good look at them. We spent quite some time roaming through the Everglades on the airboat until... I got great news! I spotted an alligator! Where, where, where? I didn't get a good shot of it at first with my camera as I was on the opposite side. I did get up though to snap a few pictures with my phone. The tour guide did make sure to do a second pass for our side to get a closer look. It was fast but I did get a better view. After that we all felt so lucky and we were ready to head back to the dock. On our way there however a woman spotted another alligator. There it is from a distance. The guide did turn around to get a second look of it but by then it was too late. The alligator was gone. At the end of the day we got to see two alligators so everyone was happy. Time for the third and final speed trail. Let's go! And check it out you guys apparently with that same ticket we also get the opportunity to attend alligator presentation. So let's go and check it out. I think we're just waiting now. So I just made it here to the show you guys. Let's see what it's all about. For this part of the video I did not record audio so I'll do my best to explain what is going on. Basically the guy on the screen is an alligator rescuer. His day job is all about going to people's houses or any areas that alligators might find a way in to ensure that the alligators are not hurt. Then the organization he's part of works to re-home these animals. The alligators show that he's about to do now is as a volunteer. The park would not let him do this as an employee. That is way too risky. So there he is fearlessly going into the alligator area and then picking one up as if it was his dog. It was so funny seeing this in person. The alligator is just like okay here we go. The show is all about providing interesting information about the alligators. He told us their bite strength is one of the most powerful in the animal kingdom. It is 2000 pounds per square inch. However, their strength is all about its jaws closing. Opening their mouth takes a lot of effort and energy. They have 80 teeth, 40 on top and 40 on the bottom. And as I mentioned earlier, they spend time in the sun resting and sleeping. So at this time they are resting and easier for him to handle. He did share many more interesting facts and made it super entertaining. So I strongly recommend staying for the show. At one point, he began opening the gator's mouth to let us hear the sound. I don't have the audio like I said, but I can only describe it as a kickball being punted so hard. Doing this is so dangerous as his hands are literally holding the jaws. Then he showed us a little trick of his. It involves holding the alligator's jaws with only his chin. This was kind of wild, definitely a crowd pleaser. But doing this was apparently not enough as he proceeded to do a similar trick, but this time with the alligator's jaws open. This was a bit stressful, not gonna lie. Oh my goodness guys, that was so much fun. What do you guys think? Is this a place that you would consider checking out if you ever visited Florida? Let me know in the comments down below. Now it's time to head back to Miami on the same bus that brought us here. That is our bus right there waiting for us. Let's enjoy our relaxing trip back. And just like that, we were back on the road. Overall, I really enjoyed my experience. I just wish I had time to explore a bit more and make more comments in front of the camera. Other than that, I strongly recommend this experience and tour. See you back in Miami. And just like that you guys, we make it to the place where we started today's video. Right here in front of Bayside Marketplace. That right there is actually our bus. Hopefully you guys enjoyed today's video. If you guys did, I'm gonna ask you to please click on the like button and subscribe to my channel if you want to check out more cool and interesting travel videos just like this one. And just to remind you to always be kind, have an open mind. I'll see you next time.