For a last minute long weekend in September, we travelled west to the old Florida town of Matlacha. This is the narrow stretch of land, between Cape Coral and Pine Island, ‘the fishingist bridge’, lined with fun colourful little buildings. These are restaurants, arts and craft shops, galleries and guest houses and, because it is so narrow, most of them sit on the water’s edge.
Our accommodation had a screened patio as well as deck on the water where we could sit with a coffee or glass of wine and watch the fish jumping, fish ourselves and moor our boat – if we had one!
There are plenty of waterways but no beaches here, nor on Pine Island but we hoped to take the ferry to Cayo Costa for sand, snorkelling and shell collecting. Unfortunately, not enough people had booked so it wouldn’t run that day, but it looks beautiful so we’ll definitely try again, and maybe even camp the night there. We were looking at using Tropic Star Adventures for the ferry – the lady on the phone was very helpful and they offer a few different routes to consider.
Instead for our beach fix, we drove over the bridge to Sanibel Island and Tarpon Bay beach. We came to Sanibel for a week when we first moved to Florida, whilst waiting for our shipment to arrive to furnish our very empty new home, and it was nice to be back and see the white sandy beaches covered with shells.
Back at Matlacha, within a 2 minute walk of our accommodation was the Blue Dog Bar and Grill and when we had passed it the previous evening the terrace had seemed suitably empty for a Covid dinner out. The children didn’t want to risk it, so stayed home with an adventurous Publix sub (!) so we had the evening to ourselves. A waterside table, local mullet 3 ways for a starter and white wine chilled in a welly – perfect!
The following day we used the included kayaks to explore the channels and islands around us. The water was very calm, barely anyone else around; a very peaceful morning paddling checking out the mangroves and window shopping for holiday homes. The friendly owner mentioned there were no guests coming into our room that day so to take our time packing up, and she brought out her new puppy for a quick play. Before heading home we made a quick detour on to Pine Island and to Bokeelia in the north. On a cooler day, we might have taken a look at the Randell Research Center for some Calusa Indians history.
