Islamorada: September, 1996

Travel We visited Isalmorada Florida over Labor Day Weekend, 1996. We traveled from Detroit to Maimi via Northwest Airlines. From Miami, we rented a car and drove to the keys. Fortunately, Hurricane Fran had changed course earlier in the week, so the Keys were left undisturbed. Even better, the threat of the hurricane had caused many travelers to change their holiday destinations so we found the keys to be very uncrowded.

Accomodations We had reserved rooms at the Cheeca Lodge on Islamorada based on the fact that they had a dive shop on the premises. We really didn't know what to expect when we arrived. We arrived to find a top notch resort with about every ammenity we could have wanted. When we checked in, our rooms were immediately upgraded as there were so many cancellations due to the hurricane threat. We had a lovely garden view room complete with balcony.

Activities We found numerous things to keep us occupied. On one of the days we went to the Theater of the Sea after diving. The Theater has a few different exhibits. There is a dolphin show and a sea lion show. They also have numerous marine animals that you can learn quite a bit about. We spent about 3 hours there one afternoon and had a very nice time. One day we drove to Key West for a late afternoon dinner and to try to see the "green flash" at sunset. Don't miss Robbies Pier at Mile Marker 77.5 where you can feed the Tarpon. We had a blast hand feeding them and got some great video footage.

Diving Like I said, we came to the Cheeca Lodge because they had a dive operator on site. All we had to do was bring our gear to the shop and sign up for a dive and they took care of the rest. We showed up on the dock the next morning and our gear was waiting for us on the boat. The first day we did two pretty shallow dives (35ft max depth). The ocean was like glass, apparently due to Hurricane Fran to the North of us. As these were my first dives since my openwater, I was fine with that. The sites we dove were called Alligator Reef and Aquarium Reef. Although the reefs were shallow, there was plenty to see. The best was a small nurse shark and stingray. Can't beat that for a first day of diving. The next day we did two similar reefs. Again, nothing challenging or fantastic, but very nice dives. At the time I remember thinking that diving could not get any better. Since then it has, but as I said, these were some very relaxing, enjoyable dives.

Copyright © 2001 Kris Warmann. All Rights Reserved.