Sanibel and Captiva Islands, Florida

When we were staying in Cape Coral Florida we decided one day to drive to see Sanibel Island and Captiva Island which are linked by a bridge.  Both Islands have been ravaged by Hurricane Ian in September of 2022.  It looked like Sanibel got hit harder than Captiva.

We had talked to many locals about Ian and they all talked about how bad the storm surge was which wiped out many houses and completely destroyed whole acres of tree life.

This used to be someone's house to the left.





Many acres of the flora were wiped out by the storm surges.  Florida is very fertile and already beginning to recover.





The beaches were much prettier before Ian.  Ian stirred up so much silt and the beaches lost a lot of sand which had to get bulldozed back.  The sand is more of a gray colour now instead of white and the water is murky and muddy and it used to be clear.  Nature has a way of renewing itself and if there are no more hurricanes probably in a year or two things will look back to normal because the land here is so fertile and the mangroves help to clean out and filter the water.


We did go to a beach on Captiva just to see what things look like and it wasn't as pretty as I was expecting and hurricane damage was very evident.

We decided to eat at The Mucky Duck restaurant which has actually had to relocate and move their restaurant back 300 ft due to beach erosion.  This was done before Hurricane Ian.

We really liked this restaurant.  It served a really good coconut shrimp and absolutely excellent margaritas.  The margaritas were 40-proof tequila which I'm not used to and two margaritas were definitely enough.  Ironically, it was the best margarita that I drank in Florida and the cheapest by far. (Margaritas during happy hour are only $6.50) 
The waiter that we had was quite funny and sarcastic and when Darren said his normal statement, "I'm allergic to garlic", the waiter said, "Well don't eat it then".  I LOL on that one.

When we were driving back I had Darren drive slower on the ocean-front drive because the mansions are ridiculously large and I wanted to gawk at them.



There were many large mansions on the drive but this one looked like the Whitehouse and may have even been larger.





Sanibel Island has been slow to recover, for example, its outlet malls look to be permanently closed down.  I'm guessing that the storm surge was really bad there and wiped them out.
Hopefully, someday these two islands will recover and look like their former self.  However, with the climate changing the way it is, there are probably more hurricanes on the way.

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