With sugar sand beaches and seashells, tropical hardwoods and Everglades swampland, Florida’s lower west coast provides a greater diversity of experiences than the east.

Instead of being packed with crowds, cultural communities and glamour, cruising the west coast brings opportunities for relaxation and the kind of casual luxury that is experienced in isolated high-end resorts. The cruising, too, is entirely different as it is less confined by the waterway and offers more open water passages.

The lower half of the coast is alternately wild and developed. At the bottom of the peninsula Cape Sable and the Ten Thousand Islands guard the swampland of the Everglades. Up the coast the shoreline transitions to sandy beaches backed by walls of pine and tropical hardwood jungle.