What would you do if a week before your trip to the Florida Keys, this was on the radar, and hurricane experts were uncertain which direction it was going to go?
Well, if you’re me, you cross your fingers and hope & pray it doesn’t ruin your weekend of scuba diving, because no matter what, you’re going!!
Hurricane Dorian ended up turning north and trekking up the east coast before dissipating back into the Atlantic. Unfortunately, not before wreaking havoc on part of the Bahamas: Grand Bahama Island & Abaco Island. The Bahamas is one of my favorite places I’ve been, and it breaks my heart to see what they are going through. If you’re able to, you can click here to find out how you can help!
Thankfully, my beloved Key Largo was left untouched, and I was able to enjoy a 4-day trip with my mom & dad (who also happens to be my favorite dive buddy). If the Florida Keys has ever been a place you’ve wanted to go, keep reading!
To be honest, I’ve never been as far south as Key West (thought I want to someday!). Key West may have great beaches, but the rest of the Keys (from my experience at least) do not, though there are a few small man-made ones. However, there’s lots of other activities to partake in, and this being my 3rd time visiting Key Largo, I figured I could cover a few of them!
DAY 1 (Friday)
We flew out of St. Louis at 6:00am and arrived in Ft. Lauderdale around 9:45am. Flights were less than $300 a person round-trip through South West. If you’ve read some of my previous blog posts, you know South West is my favorite airline! When you have to travel with an extra suitcase due to dive gear, having 2 free checked bags makes it a lot easier. We grabbed our suitcases from baggage claim and headed to the car-rental area and got a car through Hertz, which we booked online ahead of time. There are several different car rentals at the airport besides Hertz, such as Alamo, Enterprise, etc. We prefer to get one of the rental cars at the airport for the sake of convenience, although we have also used places like Fox that are not at the airport to save some money.
It’s about an hour and a half drive from Ft. Lauderdale to Key Largo, and we usually stop by Walmart in Homestead to stock up on groceries. However, for future trips, we’ve decided to just get our groceries in Key Largo once we arrive at a nearby Publix or Winn Dixie. Even though we’ve been here 3 times now, we learn something new to make the trip go smoother every time!
Last year, we stayed at the Hampton Inn, and decided we liked it well enough that we chose to stay there again this year! While the rooms are nothing fancy, the beds are comfy and it has a mini fridge, microwave, a small “kitchen sink”, and an awesome complimentary breakfast every morning. It also has a great man-made beach area with lots of beach chairs, kayaks, and an awesome pool. This was a plus for us since my mom is not a scuba diver, so she had a place to relax when we were diving. If you’re lucky, you can even see manatees playing in the water! But I think the #1 reason we like to stay here is that we can get a first-level room with patio doors, which makes bringing luggage (especially heavy dive equipment!) into the room a LOT easier! Thankfully they allowed us to check in early, so we dropped off our bags and headed out to adventure for the day!
My first time in Key Largo was back in 2016 with just my dad, which was a dive trip present for graduating nursing school. Unfortunately, due to weather, we ended up only being able to dive one day during that trip. With a lot of time to kill, we asked for recommendations on things to do. Someone at the dive shop suggested visiting the Sea Turtle Hospital in Marathon, which is about an hour further down the Keys.
Flash forward to now…I loved it so much that I wanted to visit it again on this trip! Sea turtles are my absolute favorite animals, so getting to visit a place dedicated to helping sick and injured turtles is right up my alley. They run tours at 9, 10, 11am and 12, 1, 2, 3, and 4pm. Admission is $25 per person for adults, $12 for kids ages 4-12, and free for children under 4. Tours last a little over an hour and you’ll start with watching a short presentation, get a peek into the operating room, and then see all the turtles! They have some that are permanent residents due to injuries such as boat strikes, but they also rehabilitate and release. Did you know that a turtle’s spine is connected to their shell, so when a boat hits a turtle, it often causes spinal cord injuries that can cause paralysis? Not only that, but it can also potentially cause an air pocket to form under their shell, resulting in a deformity they’ve named “Bubble Butt Syndrome”. It was named after the first turtle at the hospital found with this injury, which they named Bubble Butt, who was rescued on March 25th, 1989. It may be a funny name, but unfortunately this injury often prevents turtles from being able to be rehabilitated and released because the air pockets result in the turtle floating at the surface and being unable to dive down. This can result in another boat strike, being susceptible to predators, and being unable to find food as easily. They have started adding weights to their shells to allow them to dive, but these weights eventually fall off and have to be replaced. Turtles with this injury often stay at the Sea Turtle Hospital the rest of their lives. They also see turtles for issues such as entanglement in ropes or fishing lines, impactions caused by ingesting non-food materials such as plastic, injuries caused by predators, and Fibropapilloma, which is a virus that causes large tumors to grow that have to be surgically removed. Unfortunately, they can also face intentional injuries caused by humans as well. While visiting the Keys, we saw on the news where the hospital had rescued a turtle with a spearfishing spear embedded in its neck, which authorities believe was intentional. Thankfully, the turtle is doing well and expected to recover, but its unfortunate that some humans are so heartless that they see nothing wrong with doing this! You can read about this incident here.
The Sea Turtle Hospital does a lot of great work for this beautiful species, but they can’t do it without our help. Check out their website to make a donation, adopt a turtle, read more about what they do, or other ways you can help!
After our tour, we stopped by my favorite t-shirt store, Shell World! I always have to stop here; it’s such a unique gift shop! They have everything from house décor, to seashells, to a huge selection of shirts and hats!
We then went to one of my favorite restaurants in the Keys, Sundowners! My favorite type of dinner is dinner with a view, and this place has just that! Listen to live music while enjoying a nice sunset in their outdoor seating area? Um, yes please! I think I got up from our table at least ten times because the sunset just kept getting prettier. I got a burger (picky eater!), mom had a Mahi Mahi sandwich, and dad got Yellowtail Snapper, which looked like it could literally flop off the plate at any second. After dinner we headed off to bed, because tomorrow it was time to dive!
DAY 2 (Saturday)
Since our dives weren’t until the afternoon, we slept in (or at least I did, my parents are early risers!). We did a bit of shopping, relaxed in the hotel, checked our dive gear, had a quick lunch, then headed for the dive shop!
We’ve been with several different dive shops, including Key Largo Dive Center, Horizon Diver’s, and Pirate’s Cove Watersports, but Pirate’s Cove has been our favorite so far! We’ve always had great service with them, and their boat is big enough that you aren’t crowded trying to get your gear together. Also, I get seasick very easily, so a bigger boat isn’t affected by waves as much. Thankfully waves were less than a foot, so it was perfect diving! Our past 2 visits in the Keys, we dove in water with waves greater than 4 feet, so these were amazing conditions! If you’re not into diving, they also offer activities such as snorkeling, parasailing, and jet skiing!
Our 2 dives today were at dive sites called North Star and Spanish Anchor, which are part of Molasses Reef, and we were lucky enough to see 2 reef sharks, several nurse sharks and spotted eagle rays, and a turtle that was unfortunately too far away to get a picture of. There was a slight current but nothing unmanageable. Our guide’s name was Murphy, and he was awesome!
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about how dives work when you go with a shop. If you’re an experienced diver and have a buddy or are certified to dive independently, you can go out on a boat with a shop and dive without a guide (or take out your own boat, of course). However, even though I’ve been diving for over 8 years and my dad has been diving for almost 30 years, I still personally always choose to book with a guide whenever I’m diving off of a boat. I do this for several reasons; (1) guides at these locations know the reef better than you and will be able to help point things out for you to see and (2) the extra safety, if something goes wrong your guide should be prepared to help you. If you’re not an experienced diver and you can’t find your way back to the boat, you can be in serious trouble! You may be several miles from shore, and it’s hard to spot a diver in the water. However, even if you’re diving with a guide, it’s important to carry equipment with you in case you get separated such as an SMB (surface marker buoy) to alert the boat to where you are.
I’ve also gotten some messages about what kind of camera I use! I have a GoPro Hero 5 black with waterproof housing and a red filter attachment. Did you know that red is the first color that’s “lost” when descending underwater?! That’s why many underwater photographers use a red filter. I also don’t use a selfie stick, just a wrist strap so I can keep it close to me! I really like the quality of the GoPro and that I can download pictures and videos directly to my iPhone via the GoPro app. Eventually I would like to get a professional camera as one of my favorite things to do while diving is get good footage of what I’m seeing, so I can go back and relive it!
After our dives we were exhausted and opted to order Domino’s pizza (my fav!) for supper. We headed off to bed and prepared for the next day of diving!
P.S. Before I move on to the next day, I gotta tell a funny story!! So those of you who know me, are well aware I look a lot younger than my actual age (right now it’s a curse, someday it’ll be a blessing…I hope). So before we get on the boat, dad goes in to pay for our dives, and the lady at the counter asks if he wants to go ahead and pay for tomorrow too. He tells her no, his daughter (me) is paying for tomorrow’s dives. A woman behind him, who was also a diver and going on the same boat and saw me with him earlier, is astounded, because she thinks I’m like thirteen years old!! We get on the boat and take off, and I take my t-shirt off to get ready, and she sees my tattoo on my ribs. Now she’s also thinking my dad is terrible letting his teenage daughter get a tattoo! The captain does his safety briefings and asks if there are any medical professionals on board, and of course I had to raise my hand (I also had to call my dad out too since he’s a paramedic, haha!). A couple people joke around about me looking like a kid but being an ER nurse, and the lady finally realizes I’m not a child! She comes up to me and tells me this and apologizes saying “I overheard your dad saying you were paying for your dives tomorrow and I was shocked, wondering if he was forcing you to use your allowance or something!”. I used to get aggravated about this sort of thing since it literally happens all the time, but now I just think it’s funny when people assume I’m younger than I actually am, so to me this was hilarious!
DAY 3 (Sunday)
Up bright and early for another day of diving! Conditions were beautiful yet again (thank goodness!!) and we were lucky enough to have Murphy as our guide again. Dive #3 for this trip was at Wench Hole, dive #4 at Fire Coral Cave. Still all part of Molasses Reef, which is one of my favorite spots to dive in Key Largo!
Cool fact: Hurricane Irma, that hit the Keys in 2017, stirred the reef up so bad and carried away so much sand that the reef is actually deeper than it used to be. When we first came here in 2016, Molasses Reef had beautiful white sandy bottoms, but now the rock and old coral below has been exposed.
No turtles unfortunately, but saw several more nurse sharks, spotted eagle rays, and a huge eel! We also had a boat speed over the top of us during our dive at one point. Thankfully we were far enough below there wasn’t risk of being hit, but it’s important to drive a boat sensibly, especially near a dive boat. When we came back to the surface our captain told us he flipped them off when they went over us! We had a great 2 days of diving with Pirate’s Cove Watersports, and will definitely dive with them again next time we visit. Remember to check out my YouTube channel for some videos from diving!
After our dives we headed back to the hotel and enjoyed the beach area for a bit, then headed out for supper. I chose Marker 88, which is in a neighboring town called Islamorada about 20 minutes away. This was our first time here, and I was impressed! Another dinner with a great sunset view, plus this place has some great history. I wasn’t aware, but apparently there used to be a railroad that extended all the way to Key West. Eventually they built a highway, but some of the railroad tracks are still visible (though underwater now) from their dock!
I also want to give a shout out to the incredible live music here by a local singer named Ray Jowarski! I was impressed enough that we made sure to stop and put a tip in his jar. For food I had another burger (no surprise there), mom had a chicken sandwich, and dad tried hogfish (which he has deemed his new favorite and has decided next time we go diving, he’s going to catch one!).
DAY 4 (Monday)
Noooo!!!! I don’t wanna leave!!!!!!!
Wait…we can get late checkout? DEAL.
It’s not a trip to Key Largo unless you visit John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park! Whether you’re into snorkeling, kayaking, bird watching, beaching, or boating, this place has it all. We paid $9.50 for the entrance fee (for all 3, not each of us), which is good for the whole entire day. We went with the intentions of renting kayaks and exploring the mangroves, which is one of my favorite activities to do each time I visit. Mangroves are known to be a nursery for marine life, so if you’re lucky you might spot baby sharks, stingrays, colorful fish, or manatees!
We only kayaked for about an hour, then decided to head back to the hotel to relax for a bit before it was time to pack up and leave since we had to be at the Ft. Lauderdale airport that evening for a 7pm flight.
We had a wonderful weekend getaway to Key Largo, and I’m already looking forward to my next visit there! Travel doesn’t have to be extravagant, week long trips. We were technically gone for less than 4 full days and still had a blast and did quite a bit with the amount of time we had! So don’t be afraid to take just a couple days off and go somewhere you’ve never been. Thanks for reading, and hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about Key Largo!
I’m taking a break from traveling for the next 3-4 months to enjoy the holidays, save up, and celebrate my new nephew that should be arriving very soon (wish my sister-in-law luck!). However, I’ve got a few trips in the planning stage for next year that finger’s crossed work out, so hopefully 2020 will be one of my best years yet! Don’t worry though, I have plenty to write about until then!