The Everglades, Florida

Our last stop on this trip is the Everglades, north and west of Miami. The Everglades are a subtropical marsh that stretches more than 11,000 square kilometres across southern Florida. Water moves slowly southwards through this area until it reaches the sea.

We visited one tiny part of it, the Everglades Safari Park. Just a taster! The site we visited was interesting, but I regret that we didn't have time to go further westward to the Big Cypress National Preserve, which has those big creepy trees that we see in horror movies where characters get eaten by giant pythons, giant alligators and feral human swamp-dwellers.

Stories about those giant pythons are true. People release their pet Burmese pythons into the Everglades when they are tired of them, and they grow and grow. Our guide told us that there are around 300,000 feral pythons living in the Everglades. Florida employs contractors to kill pythons year round: $50 for a python up to 4 feet long, and $25 for each additional foot. Twice a year there's a Python Challenge, a public competition for python slaughter. The person who kills the most pythons in 24 hours wins $10,000.

No, we didn't see any pythons. But we did check the toilets we used very carefully. It's true! The pythons work their way into the sewage systems and emerge in people's bathrooms.

Miles and miles of mangroves border the national park ...

... but finally we are in the Everglades Safari Park, and it is right next to a neighbouring housing development. I guess Floridians are tough and don't mind alligators and pythons living next door. But you'd expect them to (a) guard their dogs and cats and (b) check their toilets every day.

Our transport through the Safari Park is by airboat.

The Everglades has channels that are very shallow and quite narrow, bordered on either side by fairly low vegetation. We see turtles, lots of fish, birds, and millions of mosquitoes.

We went through two very distinct types of vegetation, all very shallow: the water-lily and tree-lined channels ...

and the rivers of grass.

This is not our first time on an airboat. During our Northern Territory sojourn, we did an early morning airboat trip in Bamurru Plains near Kakadu. It was the end of the rainy season, the Wet, and the plains were flooded. The landscape in the Everglades may be quite different to the north of Australia but the airboats themselves were similar: very very loud (earplugs supplied), very fast and quite damp, if you're sitting on the outside. Which I was. Time for the driver/guide to give the airboat a whirl. Earplugs in!

Of course we've all come to see the alligators. There are more than a million alligators in Florida but we'll settle for just a few! Happily for tourists, the alligators are very territorial so they're usually found in particular places along the waterways.

We saw about four different alligators on our tour; they approach the boat not to be friendly, but to warn us away from their territory and nests. (We're just a teensy, teensy bit blasé after experiencing the formidable saltwater crocs in the Northern Territory.) 

One big female called Bubbles had eggs in her nest, or young ones nearby (they look after their babies for two years which is pretty impressive for a reptile — for anything, actually) so she was particularly concerned that we were lurking in her vicinity. She clearly wanted the boat to hightail out of her territory. It was fortunate for me that three different 'gators approached the boat from the left side of the boat where I was sitting. Usually I'm peering over tall people to see anything!

The next two alligators lingered a little less than Bubbles.

Crocodiles, particularly saltwater crocodiles, are bigger, heavier and more aggressive than alligators. So compared to our salties up north, these dudes seemed quite sweet. But I still wouldn't swim with them.

Then it's time to view some alligators up close. (Although I think ol' Bubbles got pretty close to me on the boat.) Check out the guide with the bare feet. The little critter is a baby alligator about six months old. Doesn't it remind you of a Jurassic Park velociraptor?

We wipe the Everglades mud off our shoes, kill another few hundred mosquitoes and head off back to Miami Airport for the long journey home.

But wait, I have a final treat! Remember those little robot delivery vehicles on the Miami sidewalks?

So. We get to the airport and what do I see bustling around the airport? Robot wheelchairs! Moving around on their own! I could not believe what I was seeing. Yes, you no longer need a human being to push you in a wheelchair through the airport. Instead, you book your robot wheelchair and it makes its own way to your arrival gate. It'll be there, ready for you, when you get off the plane. Then you hop into your chair, punch in the code and it takes you to your destination.

If these chairs come to an obstacle, or if you stand in front of them (naughty!), they stop, consider their options and then turn and move on politely. I tried to make one stop as I filmed this first video, then I fell over someone behind me.

The cutest thing is to see the empty wheelchairs earnestly making their way through the airport. Honestly, it wasn't just me who was delighted. Everybody smiled to see them! Look at the expressions on some of the bystanders in these videos.

So the next time you're travelling American Airlines, and you want to ride in your own robot wheelchair, book ahead and it'll be waiting for you at your gate.

This is my favourite video. The chair stops and needs to turn right, because it's going back home. The young man is not expecting a chair to behave independently at that point and — as he's admiring this vehicle and/or looking at his phone — he falls over the chair. Ha ha ha!

Amid those echoes of evil laughter, I will end this trip (and this blog post) here in Miami Airport. It's been a lot of fun.