The Westin Cape Coral and complimentary Dolphin Sighting Tour, Cape Coral, Florida

The Westin Cape Coral Resort is set on the Caloosahatchee River which runs into the Gulf of Mexico.  It is quite a picturesque spot and all balconies face the water.  

The hotel is quite elegant and grand with the coolest water feature in the middle of the lobby that is 2 stories high.

The views were lovely of the water from our 12th-floor balcony and I found myself sitting out there for hours each morning while I did my work.  Sometimes I caught the sunrise coming up.

We were lucky enough to experience a 13 million dollar - 80 ft yacht being rescued by two dredgers 5 boats, a crane and two monster shovels. 

Apparently, this multi-million dollar yacht was not moored well enough during Hurricane Ian in September and it got washed into a rivulet of the Caloosahatchee River and got hung up in the mangroves and sandbar.  The water is very shallow in that area and is protected by the state for its bird life and wildlife as well as the mangroves.  The permit cost $850,000 USD to bring these dredgers in to dredge the rivulet in order to get the dredgers up and to pull out this yacht from the mangroves. 

Apologies for the screen in the photos.  (Many Florida timeshare balconies seem to be screened in.)

They worked on it the whole week we were here and it was finally set free. Apparently, it takes five boats, two humongous dredgers one gargantuan crane, two backhoe excavators and two tug boats to get a 13 million yacht unstuck!!!

This is the yacht that was liberated from the mangroves.  Not too shabby.  It had to be towed into the marina to get gas. 

When you stay at the Westin Cape Coral there are Resort fees and part of those daily Resort fees includes a complimentary dolphin spotting Cruise.  We gladly did this cruise and for about 1.5 hours we witnessed several pods of dolphins that were hunting and fishing and it was a spectacular sight to see. 

These dolphin pods came right up to our boat literally almost touching our boat we could have almost reached out and touched them but there is a $100,000 fine attached to doing something like that as well as potential jail time.  I felt that the one pod, in particular, had been fed previously from a boat because when they poked their heads up and one had half their body half out of the water, he or she literally looked at me and it almost seemed like they were expecting food.  Spotting and watching the bottlenose dolphins is quite exciting and exhilarating and I was too daft to videotape it. 

In the photo to the left you can see on the bottom left-hand corner is white and that is the railing of the boat captured in the photo.  This is how close they were to the boat.  I could have had some excellent video coverage but I was trying to take pictures instead because I'm old school and never thought about videoing it, in the moment I was too excited to breathe.  Anyways I highly recommend taking that complimentary cruise tour.  The German girl that was our tour guide was very informative and probably one of my favourite tour guides ever she was very knowledgeable on wildlife etc and information on the Cape Coral area.

In regards to the resort, it's quite a lovely one.   The pool could be larger but you can walk across the street to the recreation center and there are two larger pools there.

The rooms are very large and they come with a very large balcony that is screened in. 

I probably averaged 4 hours a day on the balcony because it was nice and breezy.  We were on the 12th floor and we had spectacular views of the rivulets of the Chattasahoochee River and mangrove areas.  We found this resort very relaxing and had a lovely stay.  It is right on the Marina.

The bed of course was a Westin bed and was extremely comfortable.  The only complaint about the primary bedroom and bathroom was that there wasn't a bathtub and both of us like to bathe,  but we did go and use the hot tub when we felt like we needed a bath to warm up etc.  

There were two separate sinks in our large bathroom.

Having a laundry unit is nice to have.

The living room was huge with a really nice couch with a chaise lounge end on it.  

The dining room was very comfortable and the kitchen was very nice with a brand-new Whirlpool fridge and ice maker. 

One complaint about the kitchen was it hardly had any dishware.  It had two mugs, one white wine glass, three red wine glasses, four large plates and four small plates and very little cutlery.  We found we were doing our own dishes quite often.  Perhaps a lot of things were broken and not replaced.

Another complaint about our room was that the lock-off side door that separates the two units was very ineffectual for soundproofing.  We had the one-bedroom side and for the first few days there was another family next door and I felt like we were in the room together with them.  We actually took two bath towels and put them under as a doorstop to try and block out the noise.  The exact same situation occurred on our balcony there was a lock-off door to the other side balcony and there was no soundproofing on that door as well so when I was out on the balcony when the family was on their balcony, I felt we were sharing the balcony together.  I do expect better in 4 and 5-star hotels.

The cleaning was subpar in the rooms at this resort.  The floor looked like it needed to be vacuumed and have a good scrubbing.  The living room rug although one of my favourites was not very clean it needed thorough carpet shampooing.

The design and the decor of this unit were exactly to my taste.  I could live in this one-bedroom unit if there were more dishes and a bathtub.

There are complimentary bikes that you can use and we took advantage of this.  The bikes were crap, wobbly and should be melted down. But they were a good workout because they did not work well.

The resort had a couple of restaurants and we ate breakfast every morning at the Nauti Mermaid because we are Marriott Platinum people we chose the free breakfast and it was delicious.  

I had the 'world-famous fish tacos' (their claim) one evening and they were delish.  They still are not my tacos from  Lateral in San Jose Del Cabo.  I took a pic of our bartender's shirt to the left.  He made a mean margarita and we took in one happy hour at their outside bar which has a great ambiance amongst the marina boats.

There is a new restaurant just a short walk down the marina that just opened up a week ago which we hope to check out later.

Just a short walk away from this very large resort is a boardwalk to a tower in the middle of the mangroves. 

It is a nice little nature walk.  It has been cut literally in half due to this boat being hung up on the mangroves so half the length of the boardwalk is closed off to the public.

The Cape Coral area has the most water canals in the world.  They have 400 miles of them so it does take quite a long time to really drive anywhere.

The Cape Coral area has been hit hard by Hurricane Ian in September of 2022.  Roughly 1 in 3 roofs have been ripped off or damaged so badly that they named it Tarp City because of this fact.

To the left is a photo of 4 rooftops and 3 of them are tarped.  This is unfortunately a very common site in the Cape Coral area.  Hurricane Ian did not play nice with this area.  The roofing business however is flourishing and the tarp-making industries are having a heyday.

From our balcony, I mentioned the views are quite delicious but we can also see Fort Myers in the distance which is south of Cape Coral. 

A short drive away in miles but at least an hour's drive away is Captiva Island. We went there to check out the beach and ended up eating at the Mucky Duck. 

The food was excellent and the Margaritas more so. Margaritas were made with 40-proof Tequila. The Mucky Duck is right on the beach and has a great ambiance.  We ate outside on the picnic tables under the umbrella.

Sanibel and Captiva Islands have been trashed by Hurricane Ian.  The beaches are not as pretty as they normally are, but they are in recovery mode.

Overall the staff at the Westin Cape Coral Resort are very well trained other than maybe the cleaning staff.  We really enjoyed our stay here at The Westin Cape Coral.