Key Largo

Key Largo sits on a fossil coral reef rather than a sand bar, and it shows: there are almost no natural beaches. Swimming happens at small, man-made patches of sand in John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, at a few town parks and at resort lagoons, where the water is calm, shallow and often edged with seagrass and mangroves. The sea itself is the draw, warm enough to swim all year at around 24°C in winter and close to 30°C in summer.

The real way into the water here is from a boat, out to the reef a few miles offshore. Visitors who picture long walks along white sand will be disappointed; those happy to swim off a dock or a dive boat will not.

Eating in Key Largo means fresh fish, cooked simply and eaten outdoors by the water. Yellowtail snapper, grouper and mahi-mahi come off local boats and are served grilled, blackened or fried in sandwiches, alongside conch fritters, stone crab in its winter season and the Key lime pie the islands are known for. Restaurants are mostly casual open-air places on docks and canals along the Overseas Highway, with a few more polished resort dining rooms.

It is pleasant rather than deep: there is little beyond the seafood formula, no market culture and few cafés worth seeking out. Serious eating means the drive north to Miami.

Key Largo has little in the way of sights. The boat used in the film The African Queen is kept at a marina, the bronze Christ of the Abyss statue lies underwater on the reef, and a short drive south in Islamorada a small museum tells the history of diving. Otherwise the island is a line of marinas, motels and houses along the highway, with no historic town centre or museums of weight. Visitors come for what lies offshore.

Evenings in Key Largo centre on sunset. Open-air tiki bars on the bay side fill up for a drink as the sun goes down, often with a guitarist playing, and a few of them stay lively into the night at weekends. That is most of it: there are no clubs, and with dive boats leaving early, most visitors are in bed well before midnight. A night out of any scale means Miami or a long drive to Key West.

Key Largo calls itself the diving capital of the world, and the claim is fair. John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park protects a stretch of the only living coral barrier reef in the continental United States, with shallow reefs such as Molasses and French Reef for snorkellers and the Spiegel Grove, a large naval ship sunk as an artificial reef, for deeper dives. Visibility is best in the calm months of late spring and summer.

On the bay side, mangrove channels suit kayaking and paddleboarding, Florida Bay offers fine flats fishing, and manatees, crocodiles and wading birds live in the backcountry. The Everglades begin just across the water on the mainland. The land itself is flat scrub and hammock, so this is a place for boats, not boots.

The best day out is north, to Miami, about an hour and a half by car, for Art Deco South Beach, Little Havana and the museums of the city. Closer at hand, Homestead on the mainland has the odd limestone folly of Coral Castle, and south along the Overseas Highway lie the fishing town of Islamorada and Marathon with its sea turtle hospital. Key West is the obvious lure but takes well over two hours each way, which makes it more of an overnight than a day trip. Beyond that the choice is thin.

Key Largo works well for families with children old enough to snorkel. The water is warm and calm, the shallow reefs are easy to see from a glass-bottom boat, and John Pennekamp has short nature trails and a small aquarium at its visitor centre. Dolphin encounter programmes operate on the island, and in Islamorada a long-established marine park shows dolphins and sea lions.

For small children it is more limited: the beaches are tiny, there are no theme parks or zoos, and everything means a drive along the highway. Summer brings heat, mosquitoes and the hurricane season, so families tend to come in the drier winter and spring months.

Key Largo is strung along a single road, the Overseas Highway, and everything is addressed by its mile marker. A car is effectively necessary: hotels, marinas, restaurants and the state park are spread over some 30km of highway with few pavements, and buses are sparse. The road is easy to drive, though traffic slows on Friday and Sunday afternoons and over long weekends, when the mainland heads south. Most of the day's movement happens by dive or tour boat from the marinas, which pick up close to where visitors stay.

Shopping is limited to roadside souvenir shops, beachwear outlets, a few small art galleries selling island-themed work and well-stocked dive and fishing shops. Nobody comes to Key Largo to shop; anything more means a trip to the outlet mall in Florida City or to Miami.

Key Largo is an expensive place to stay, particularly in the high season from December to April. Rooms on the water, whether at a resort or a renovated motel, cost far more than comparable lodging on the mainland, restaurant meals are priced for visitors, and dive, snorkel and fishing charters add up quickly. It is a little easier on the budget than the islands further south, and staying on the mainland in Homestead or Florida City and driving in cuts costs sharply, at the price of the daily commute.

There is next to no performing arts life here. Live music means a singer with a guitar on a bar's deck at sunset, and the Upper Keys have only a small community theatre. For concerts, opera or theatre, the venues are in Miami.

Key Largo slows people down. Days start early on the water and end with sunset on a dock, and the bay-side resorts with their hammocks, pools and quiet lagoons are built for doing very little. Several of the larger resorts run full spas with massage and treatments, and yoga on a dock is easy to find.

There is no bathing tradition or spa culture beyond the hotels, though, and the busy highway runs through the middle of everything. Choose a place to stay on the bay side, away from the road, for the calmest stay.