Parasailing-Marco Island

Parasailing looks exhilarating from the beach. Unfortunately, it’s not as cool as it looks. You go way up the air, but it doesn’t feel like you’re that high. That’s probably because there isn’t any scale. Water looks the same size no matter how far away you are. The other boats in the water looked small, but they weren’t very big to begin with. I’ll give it a 2 on my “was it worth it scale?” I can’t see myself doing it again, unless I can do it for a lot less that the $80/person price tag this came with.

I went up with Abby and her friend Avery. A lot went into that decision. At first it was just Mady going with her friend Belle. Then Abby said she wanted to go, but Avery didn’t so I was going to go with Abby. Then Avery decided she would go. We thought we were set and just the four girls would go in pairs. Then we found out the two younger girls weren’t heavy enough to go by themselves. Our next idea was for the siblings to go as that would have taken care of the weight requirement. Of course, they didn’t want to do that because they are small women and prone to be difficult. In the end, I went with the lighter girls. Partially to help them reach the weight requirement, partially to but their nerves at ease, and partially because I’ve always wanted try it. And because they are siblings, the older girls made me and the younger ones go first to try to freak us out. Thankfully that backfired.
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Jet Skiing-Marco Island

I found Captain Ron’s Awesome Everglades Adventures after a little searching and it looked right up our ally. We have a guide taking us through the 10,000 islands (I have to trust them as that was a few more than I wanted to count). It’s a little pricey at $210 for two hours, but I’m the type that’ll spend a little extra to do something that I don’t normally get to do.

On the “was it worth it?” scale I’d give it a 7 out of 10. The guides took some time training us how to operate the wave runners and they were great at spotting wildlife. There were four wave runners in our group and I was the only one with passengers. The other 3 were a couple in their 50’s and their 20-something son with unfortunate facial hair. The wife in the group had a bit of a lead foot (or finger) so she and I took turns following the guide while the other two guys brought up the rear. In between finding dolphins and manatee we could let the jet skis rip. The website said they normally go about 20 MPH on the tour. Thankfully that was a lie. In between checking out the wildlife we were going full throttle, which on these Waverunners was about 40 MPH. We weren’t setting any speed records, but it was a lot of fun. They also gave us a cd of pictures, I’m attaching a few. You’ll see what I mean about the unfortunate facial hair.
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