Homestead, Florida

In the southern part of Florida, there’s a really nice area called Homestead. Close to the Everglades and the Keys, you can drive to quite a few cool destinations from there. 😎

One of the places on my plant bucket list was the Fruit & Spice Park. It’s a botanical garden where you can sample the fruits and spices growing there. Normal admission as of 12/30/2024 is: $15 per adult, $8 per child 6-11, and children under 5 are free. This includes allowing you to sample the fruits and leaves on the ground, but not picking from the tree. It also allows you to go on the free trolley ride throughout the park with a guide that has really good information. Our guide, Phillip, was great! He took us through the park on the trolley, and he also guided us to a few areas on foot so we could get closer to the plants he was teaching us about. There are also Tasting Tours, but we opted for the Free Tour and did a self-guided Walking Tour on our own so we could wander around at our own pace.

We love plants, so we were amazed by the ones we saw. The bananas towered above our heads! The starfruit were so plentiful they were falling off the tree! We did pick some of them up and tried them. They are so much tastier and juicier than the ones in the grocery store! We tried chocolate sapote at the visitor’s center and really enjoyed it. None of us had ever had a salon gooseberry, so tasting them was a new experience for all of us. They were tart, but we liked them! My favorite was the Mamey Sapote and it tasted like brown sugar and caramel. Yum!

There were various regions in the park where trees and fruit grew, each one according to the area where they originated from. One of our favorites was the Australian region and seeing the Rainbow Eucalyptus tree. The Japenese region had some really cool trees that we were excited to see matched what we grow at home such as the loquat, fig, mulberry, and bamboo. The African region had a really cool Boabab tree. Some other trees we liked were the breadfruit (the kids enjoyed sticking the leaves to their clothes), coconut, and Japanese Raisin (we plan on trying to locate one to grow at home!).

The raised herb garden was really nice! There were also beautiful fountains, ponds, and pools that had some amazing water lilies in them.

The iguanas and lizards seemed to enjoy the water, too! We all got the biggest kick out of the iguanas. They were huge! Juliana had a blast watching them fall from the tree into the water. They were so cool to watch!

You can find a video of the iguanas here:

Luke and Juliana even practiced their soccer skills with a coconut! They had a great time. 🥥🥅

After we left the Fruit & Spice Park, we decided to head to Monkey Jungle. Joe had been there with his family when he was in the 3rd grade and had loved it so much he wanted to share it with us. I can see why–it was pretty cool!

Although things had changed since he was there, our family really had a good time! There were quite a few different kinds of monkeys, but all of them were adorable!

Regular admission as of 12/30/2024 was: Adults: $20.00 Children (ages 3 – 9): $10.00. This included viewing any or all of the shows and a self-guided tour. Guided Rainforest Tours were available at an additional cost. The shows they offer are: Wild Monkey Swimming Show–featuring the Java Macaques, Reptile Review–where we could feed the iguanas and tortoises, and the Amazonian Rainforest Show–where we could see the Capuchin and Squirrel monkeys being fed in the only semi-natural tropical rainforest in North America. They were all really good, but our favorite was the Wild Monkey Swimming Show where we saw a momma monkey with her adorable baby.

You can see some of the videos we took here:

I loved taking pictures of the beautiful flowers that grow in the park.

Monkey Jungle is more than just a park with monkeys. According to their website, “The venue is home to over 300 primates, most running free on a 30 acre preserve. And, it’s one of the few protected habitats for endangered primates in the United States and the only one that the general public can explore.” You can find out more about them at their website: https://www.monkeyjungle.com/home. The animals seemed well taken care of and very well fed. This was a memorable experience and well worth the trip!

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