Thank you for your honest review and thank you for choosing Pirates Cove for your Key Largo adventures. I'm sorry that you didn't have the greatest experience on the reef. It has been very windy over the past couple months, and we have actually been unable to make it out to the reef most days. On the days that we have been able to go, the conditions haven't been ideal. However, guests who are visiting are still excited to get out and see whatever they can, so we still run our trips and find the places with the best conditions possible. This is typical of visiting the Keys during winter. The winds are typically high and the weather much more unpredictable. I recommend visiting us during the summer months if you want a chance to see a specific spot, such as the Statue, with the best conditions possible. The Statue is a great snorkel/dive spot, and I highly recommend coming back during summer season to see it at its best. As I mentioned, when the weather has been bad, we are simply trying to find the best/safest conditions, which doesn't necessarily mean you get to go to the best sites on the reef that we would love to show you if conditions were better, so I hope you have an opportunity to give our reef another chance sometime. Also, it is typical in the Keys not to include a guide in the water. The reefs are very shallow and surround the boat, so to keep tour prices low for our guests, we do not automatically put staff in the water. Guides are availabe for hire. This would have been the same experience if you had gone to the John Pennekamp Park or, really, most any other snorkel boat in Key Largo.
I'm glad your family enjoyed your Jetski tour with Andy. He is an excellent guide, and we get great feedback from our guests who are able to go out on tour with him. Due to the nature of riding on jetskis, the jetski tour is more visual and isn't as focused on providing information about the local environment. Most tours have people going different speeds and due to the noise of the skis, it is hard for the guide to talk to guests during the tour, and most people want to keep moving to enjoy the thrill of a jetski. A jetski tour is really a way to get guests out of the bay and able to see other areas of the local environment. If you rent a ski to drive without a tour, you are restricted to skiing only on the bayside, and many guests are curious to see what else is out in the mangroves and on the ocean side. If you are interested in seeing manatees and learning more about the local environment, we offer an EcoTour on one of our pontoon boats. Those go to different places where wildlife is more prevalent and the guide is talking nearly the entire time about the local environment and wildlife. I'm really sorry if there was any confusion about the nature of your tour, and I hope you might be able to come back and enjoy an EcoTour with us.
Thanks again for joining us at Pirates Cove Watersports. If you're ever back in the area, we hope that you can stop by and let us give you a five star experience. We value being able to give all our guests wonderful memories of their time in Key Largo.
