Everglades, Key West, Florida

We first drove from Miami to Crystal River on the west coast of Florida, 80 miles north of Tampa.
There, people can swim with manatees. It's well organized, presumably to avoid abuses since these manatees are so soft and quite. We arrived late at night and slept in Homosassa Springs where we spotted a few armadillos.
I had never seen these animals before and did not even know they were living there. I just walked in the dark with my camera and the flash on, approached it and snapped the photo. It's only then, that to my surprise, I discovered the armadillo that was digging in the dirt.
Then, a long 500 mile drive south towards Key West with a few stops in Everglades National Park where we saw countless alligators, pelicans and other wild birds.
As seen in the next picture, I spotted a large snake that did not seem to be native to Florida.
After reporting the finding to a park ranger I was told that I had made a mistake, that it was something else since the description did not match any species that could be found on location.
I could fortunately snap a picture of that snake, picture that I could not show at the time to the park ranger because of technical reasons.
Once back home, I managed to finally see the photo and here it is. It seems to be a reticulated python or a Burmese python. Either way they are not native to Florida, but rather the rainforests of Asia. Since I saw this one on its own, it must have been someone's escaped pet. These guys can grow to more than 20 feet long.

Here's a quick update from 2009. I recently read on cbsnews.com that a Python hunt is underway because the Everglades are infested with pythons.
"It's unclear how many pythons are prowling in the wild across South Florida, but state wildlife officials estimate there are at least tens of thousands.
The following photo shows a trail that we wanted to hike. The sign was quite funny and felt kind of useless.
A large alligator was resting on the grass. Being only equiped with my small point and shoot camera I moved closer to get the following picture. Snapping this photo just a few feet away from this large alligator was exciting and scary. At some point I was a bit too close and a long and deep grunt made me understand that I had to back off. Someone from Australia later told me that if that had been a saltwater crocodile he could have and would have covered the distance between us in a fraction of a second and that I would never have been able to write these lines. Something to keep in mind.
We then left for Key West, crossing the famous but kind of boring Key Largo, stopping at Marathon to swim with dolphins at the Dolphin Research Center
We then cruised the seven mile bridge where the scene from the movie True Lies with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis was shot.
Soon after we arrived in Key West, by far the nicest place of the keys and way more interesting than Miami.
There were cuban cigars for sale all over the place. The 'funny' thing is that because of the embargo on Cuba, cigars cannot be imported from there so they are not really cuban made and cannot be called cuban cigars, but the tobbacco or the seeds often comes from there via other countries. Some cuban Florida residents then make the cigars.
Politics can really lead to weird things. Key West is closer to Cuba than it is to Miami.
Duval Street is were most of the animation happens late into the night. Shops stay open late, ice screams, pinacoladas and food are often excellent.