Everglades Re-visited 2 ……Big Cypress National Park

My visit to the USA in 2009 was never a dream come true. It was only because Naveen our son, having won a scholarship to read a PhD at Miami in 2006 and us qualifying for a Visa being able to meet the minimum financial requisites.

Camping in the Everglades  of Florida, the worlds  largest mangrove ecosystem was such a memorable event back in 2009.http://udithawijesena.blogspot.com/2011/08/camping-in-everglades-hemamala-uditha.html A speck of the Everglades seen, but the perspective in memory being so large given the size of the Everglades. Back home after a month's stay in Florida with a secreted wish to explore the Western Everglades if a chance was to come by.

 

Come 2011 we are blessed with our fist grand child and my wish to re-visit the Everglades was fulfilled. Though equipped with imaging paraphernalia and optical instruments this time, camping was not possible with the marauding swamps of mosquitoes. The winds from the south that push them away had not reached Florida yet. Instead we stayed over at Naples a town in the west coast of Everglades favoured by retirees visiting the Big Cypress National Park in the Everglades.  Big cypress National Park and two other visits to the Everglades National Park located more to the south where the famous Long Pine and the Flamingo camping sites and the Anhinga Nature Trail on board walks are located was mainly for birding and photography.

 

Big Cypress located slightly above the other western Everglades is home to native Miccosukee and Seminole tribes, who lived off the fauna and flora of the glades supplying  heron and egret feathers to hat-makers in New York and Paris are now facilitators to the hunters and visitors that come over for recreation.

Big Cypress differs from the Everglades National Park as the Miccosukee and Seminole people have permanent rights to occupy and use the land. Them, and the seasonal hunters are permitted to use off road vehicles [ORV] and Air Boats that glide over the saw grass swamps, while home and business owners have been permitted to keep their properties. The hunters here are so strong and puissant that them with conservationists and the natives were successful in deprecating a new airport facility within the Big Cypress area for international flights even after a runway was constructed. Justification being that the hunters put in more revenue towards conservation of the glades by hunting the deer for recreation in the glades seasonally.

 

Air Boat that glides over the grasses

Yes…. the Americans are different. Today the natives provide lodging and conveyance facilities for the visiting hunter.Big cypress though touted as a "recreational paradise" by the Department of the Interior, the scientists and conservationists have noted the need to reduce the ORV trails by 700 km due to the adverse affect on the fauna and flora by over visiting and exploitation. This is despite to the persistent calls for more in roads from the hunters and ORV enthusiasts.

Clyde Butcher the renowned photographer who showed the world the  Everglades in Black and White  has  home and gallery in the Big Cypress. 

Clyde Butcher Gallery - [inset] Clyde Butcher in conventional photography

Flora & Fauna of Big Cypress
 

Big Cypress is home for the Cotton-mouth snakes, Eastern Diamond-back rattler, Alligators, White-tailed deer , the very elusive Florida Panther,  Florida Black Bear, Wood stork and various other Florida birds. Mangrove forests, cypress trees, royal palm, cigar orchids, pines and prairie grasses are some of the vegetation types found in the preserve.

The Florida Panther is the most sought after creature in the Everglades and it is sad to say that most  seen are road kills. This specimen is one such, from an accident in May 1996. And is now displayed at the Big Cypress visitor centre. The link explains the fate of the Florida Panther.

http://focusingonwildlife.com/news/3-florida-panthers-die-in-the-first-ten-days-of-2012/

 

The final resting place for this female, a showcase for the masses; otherwise a most illusive species ,

The most venomous Cotton mouth snakes are much in the grass, one needs to be careful when trekking. Many are the snakes in the glades while the Burmese Python population that has procreated off six zoo escapees during a hurricane  is a major threat to the small mammal and deer populations and are now shot on sight.

Cotton-mouth so called as it's inner lining of the mouth resemble cotton and is white in color

Numerous are the butterfly fauna that breed in the glades.

Larvae that consume substantial amounts of leaf matter

Finally the Butterfly

The Eastern Lubber [Orange and Yellow] is a grasshopper that is quite large
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A Yellow and Orange Lubber grasshopper

The Bald-eagle has a large territory. This particular Eagle nests’ in the Big Cypress National Park
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Exceptional diversity of avian fauna in the Everglades

Alligators are a galore…….thanks to a conservation aimed ban on shooting they have developed in numbers from almost extinct.

They come in all sizes

Its only the tip of the iceberg

Though waterlogged the flora is pleasing and artistically formed.

Flowering grasses floating grasses- numerous are the color hues

Water is pure and clean

Water-logged and trapped in the vegetation the volume of water is so large that the flow is hardly recognized

Cypress in the water

Dirt tracks for the ORV that chunk the Everglades threatening the fauna

Naples the stay over city in the West Everglades

Naples in the Southwest coat of Florida -- nestled on the sun drenched beaches of the Gulf of Mexico is a main up market stay over location for the visitor. Naples is known for world class shopping, dining and  is also, is only steps away from the untamed tropical wilderness of  Everglades. Boasting one of the nation's best sandboxes and calmest seas, Naples makes a splash with water lovers and recreationists. 

A beach for leisure and recreation

Toddlers, parents and grandparents they all come here to enjoy and relax

Setting sun over the Naples' jetty

Sun going down in the Gulf of Mexico

Solitude

A loner

When the Kids host you in the New Year

Love and affection keep us united and attached to one another. Culture and society have dedicated days, norms, means and ways of communicating  love and affection. The  beginning of the Gregorian Calender is one such day. 

Twenty years ago our neighbours migrated to the UK, Sankalpa their daughter who was my daughter's play kid is now a lady of 25 and is here on holiday. Bright eyed, playful, slightly mischievous says; today is the last day of the year and I am hosting both uncle, aunty and Hiru [our daughter] for lunch and before that we would go out swimming at Wellamadama [now known as the famous Unawatuna beach in Galle]. We have no choice but to agree......but I put in a condition, we need to be on the beach before the crowd set in. She too had a condition; the sea-bath is not to be discussed with her mother in the UK. The horoscope needs her to be away of water bodies and people.....recommends a cave dweller?

Panoramic view of Unwatuna Beach

In to our swimming shorts and we leave for the beach with toasted sandwiches and a bottle of coke; the phone rings and strangely it's a call from the UK. Siriya the cook-maid suspected her dress and not being home for lunch passed the news to the UK. What a small world we live in where everyone has access to technology. Persuasions, excuses, warnings, be careful s and we are in the water; cool beneath warm above and soothing. Most of all Hemamala too is in the sea, after four years. Yes... this being a special hosting. Two hours of splashing I try to recollect what it would have looked over here on 31st December 2004, five days after the boxing-day Tsunami that devastated much of Asia's sea front. Today the crowds pour in to make fun and enjoy the sun and splash,... the unplanned tourist infrastructure that came up after the Tsunami is getting ready to host the booze and dance parties that will rock this place tonight till dawn on the first day of  2012. Again, what a forgetful world we live in.

Cool & Refreshing

By mid day the place gets crowded and we decide it's enough.  We amble along the crowd; strangely though much of the local crowd being Moors with the weaker sex also in the water clad in their obligatory  black burqa, abayat, niqab and black socks coming in all sizes and shapes basking in the sun resembling beached whales. I salute the masculine gender that allowed them so, among the ample flesh that was exposed  for tanning. Pity that Afghanistan lacks a sea front.

Cruise Ship outside Galle Harbour

Home for a freshwater bath and we are seated in a modern day restaurant munching fried chicken and chips.

By evening I invite her to ours for  dinner;  roast chicken imported for Christmas now going half rate as the expiry day is nearing is sumptuous with a Sri Lankan style potato curry with tortilla bread, coconut sambol and roasted pork chop chased down with ale and coffee brings us to the shift in the clock. It's the Year 2012.

That was a memorable and a naughty way to complete a year. Lucky for we have another new-year dawning in April; the Sinhala & Tamil New Year which is celebrated with much grandeur, tradition and culture.