I’m not going to lie, when I pictured myself taking an airboat ride through the Florida Everglades I pictured myself standing at the front of the boat, the wind blowing through my hair, shades on and hands on my hips taking in the scenery like it was no big thing

I also had an image of Horatio from CSI: Miami standing on one in a similar pose floating around in my head and that’s kinda what I was trying to embody..

“Drive by…Miami style.”

In reality I was sitting in the second row from the front on the edge of the boat in a bright sundress.

Sometimes because my eyesight is so bad I would switch from sunglasses to my extra strength prescription glasses to try and get a glimpse of an alligator lurking in the shade of the trees.

This was not the Horatio image of myself I had pictured.

The night I arrived in Miami the concierge handed me a stapled stack of papers with information they thought a tourist might need to know during their stay. Nearby restaurant and entertainment options, map of the surrounding area, special tour options, etc.

Because I was traveling by myself and needed more to do than eat and lay on the beach (which in itself sounds amazing enough) I booked a couple of tours to take up my weekend.

Saturday morning I woke up, dressed and walked to the meeting point for the Everglades tour. I walked right up to the red tour bus, said my name and panicked when the tiny german woman told me my name wasn’t on the list.

I went into the office made a stink about how the concierge made my reservation and Dylan in their office confirmed it and then promptly walked out when they said there was no one by the name of Dylan working in their office.

I freaked out a little more on the sidewalk as I dialed the number given to me by the front desk until someone from the correct tour agency reassured me that the bus driver would be arriving in a few moments to pick me up from where I was currently standing.

The bus pulled up and the doors opened, “Jenny Kastle?” The driver asked

“YES!” I rushed onto the bus and took a seat right behind him.

We chit chatted a bit as we picked up the rest of the people going on the tour. Eddies Torres, from Puerto Rico (don’t hold that against me ) was driving a big bus of tourists from South Beach down the Tamiami trail to look at some gators.

“It’s nice. You’ll like it. They even let you hold an alligator and take a picture with it.” I nearly died from the overwhelming excitement.

I’ll let you in on a little secret, I love alligators. I think they’re absolutely adorable. I don’t know what it is exactly, maybe it’s their wide bodies and their chubby baby legs or something about their sassy walk.

We arrived at the aptly named “Gator Park” and made our way to the dock. I truly realized we were not in Miami anymore, Toto, when I hear the accents of the workers. It’s a strange southern accent that sounds different from all the other southern accents I’d heard before. This wasn’t just the south, this was southern Florida. Gone were the sing songy caribbean accents with their long vowel sounds.

We’re handed ear plugs that we’d need for certain parts of the ride and we climbed aboard.

We headed down the river of grass and kept our eyes open for gators and other critters. The captain told us about the history of the Everglades, about the creatures who lived there and about the indians that used to live on the tiny islands throughout.

At one point to illustrate the shallowness of the water he stopped the boat and dipped his hand in pulling out dirt and leaves from the bottom.

On our way back to the dock we did see a couple of tiny baby alligators sunning themselves on lilypads and it was totally presh.

The rest of the trip was spent in the big hut where another one of the workers introduced us to some of the animals they have there at the park.

We watched as he walked through the crowd with a tiny snapping baby gator in hand and then demonstrated the proper way to wrassle a gator. We watched as he wrestled and subdued a full grown gator named Norman and all lined up happily to take our photo with a younger and smaller alligator whose real name I can’t remember and who I’ve since named Trevor.

It took everything I had within me not to cuddle him a little.

I held a baby gator and was forever changed.