Captiva Cruises run scheduled daily trips to a variety of interesting places around Captiva and Pine Island Sound. We travelled with them on 3 separate occasions in 2019, once to Boca Grande and twice to Cayo Costa State Park. Cayo Costa is only accessible by boat and has what is considered to be one the best shelling beaches in the world. The beach is nine miles long and virtually deserted. There are 6 miles of hiking trails through acres of pine forest.
Captiva Cruises take under an hour to sail to Cayo Costa from Captiva Island, you then have about 4 hours on the island and then another hour back to Captiva. There are toilets on the island and a very small shop for water etc but you have to bring everything else with you. There are no sun beds or umbrellas on the beach so you have to bring your own. There is a shuttle run by friends of the state park which takes about 10 mins to thread its way through the forest to the western side of the island where the beaches are.
It really is a beautiful deserted island, there are a handful of private vacation homes at the southern end of the island but other than the visitors that arrive by boat you have the place to yourselves.
We visited in June and November and the swimming is great in clear warm water. The shelling is pretty amazing too.
Captiva Cruises staff are very knowledgeable about the area and the resident wildlife.
Expect to see dolphins on the cruise to and from the island they really love surfing the wake of the boat.
We will repeat this trip whenever we are in Florida on holiday.