A Day With the Sea Turtles
We recently took a day trip to the Turtle Hospital Sea Turtle Center in Marathon, FL. My 6 year old loves to learn about animals and the ocean and I’d been promising this experience for a few months. So, we decided to make the 3-ish hour trip from Fort Lauderdale, seeing as how they have reopened to the public, and with safety measures in place.
It is recommended to buy tour tickets online in advance, as tours are timed, and they are accepting limited numbers of participants due to the social distancing measures in place. The tours seem to fill at least a few days in advance, so you will need to know when you want to go.
We booked a 2pm tour, which gave us lots of time to stop in Key Largo for lunch on our drive down. Lunch was some fresh Mexican food at a little food truck called Tacos Jalisco. If you like hot sauce at all, they make their own, and it is a must. After a delicious, fresh burrito, we went next door to Key Largo Chocolates and Ice Cream for dessert. My daughter had ice cream and I tried their key lime pie (how could I not?)! There is outdoor seating for both the food truck and the ice cream shop, so we ate outside and then headed further south to see the turtles!
The Turtle Hospital staff are very organized and everything felt very clean and safe. The first part of the tour is indoors and teaches about the work that the hospital does and how important it is that we all do our part to reduce waste that can end up in the ocean. Sea turtles ingest the trash and it causes them terrible complications. One of the important takeaways here was to not only reduce use of plastics like bags and straws, but also never let balloons go into the sky, as they tend to eventually end up in the ocean.
The second part of the tour was outdoors, visiting and feeding the turtles that the hospital cares for. We loved seeing them up close, but at the same time it is so sad that some of them won’t get to return to the wild because of their injuries.
The hospital staff and the work they do is vital to preserving the lives of these sweet animals. So, if you’re looking to get out for a day, go visit the Turtle Hospital to learn and have fun while supporting a great cause.