Welcome to Calusa Ghost Tours
Visit our new location on the Imperial River in Bonita Springs Florida
All New Calusa Ghost Tours to Mound Key on the Estero Bay Express
“Paddle back in time with us”
We offer cultural/historical, eco, and fishing adventures on Pine Island and offer full outfitter services and accessories. You can, rent, take a guided adventure, or buy from us. We endorse and are sponsored by RTM Kayaks and Canoes we carry a full line in our rental fleet for you to try out.
We also carry Kiwi Kayaks (clear bottom kayaks).
Calusa Ghost Tours offers Kayaker’s Concierge service to help accommodate their unique needs, from finding lodging or campsites to mapping out trips or moving your kayak to a remote island you can camp on, we can help you with it all.
Our office is equipped with a big screen and Google Earth to help paddlers locate trails and our second monitor is tuned to the weather radar so the paddler knows what is going to happen that day. Tides, wind, rain, and lightning all should be considered before paddling out into the Sound.
You can take a kayaking fishing adventure with me or the Snook Cowboy
We offer seminars in Calusa Indian primitive technologies like making cording from palm fiber or latex paint from tree sap. We will be adding our arts page and it will have Calusa replica pieces and my own interpretation of Calusa Art. We specialize in telling the stories of the lost civilization of the Calusa. Paddle back in time with us in our “Shadow of Cushing Adventure”. Paddle and/or walk in Famous Explorer Frank Hamilton Cushing path as he first discovered and then mapped out the site in 1895.
Visit our different pages and discover a part of south Florida you did not know about.
Please visit our video site www.calusabackwater.com and see our newest video that features sea turtles mating. We were lucky enough in our adventures of Pine Island Sound to encounter these two turtles.
Our Eco Wildlife paddles are always and adventure. Pine Island Sound boast the largest resident population of Bottle Nosed Dolphins in the world so the chance of an encounter is better here than anywhere else short of captivity. Unlike to major theme parks none of our attraction animals are captive.
For those of you that have never heard of the Calusa, they were the first Native Americans encountered by the discoverer of Florida Ponce Deleon and they were also the people that killed him. Theirs is an epic tale that ends in their extinction. They built great spiral shell pyramids and worshiped their own One God. With a Great Cacique (Great King), royal family, religious leader, war captain, and military. The Calusa controlled all south Florida. Today their pyramids remain and I give guided walks of one of their cities (Tampo). While working at this archeological site as Operations Manager I was in contact with many world renown scientists and I relate many of the stories and research I learned while their. Also I conducted my own research and got interpretations from scholars with the University of Florida of documents of that time including a letter from Ponce Deleon interpreted by Dr John Worth.
Please take the time to check out our affiliates to learn more about this wonderful area, lodging, magazines, restaurants, events, and more.
My friend the Snook Cowboy and I are writers for the Nautical Mile, Florida Marine Times, and Kayak Angler Magazines. We have been featured on the public TV series Connects. You can see all our videos at www.youtube.com then searching Calusajohn or Snook Cowboy.
Please enjoy the site and contact us for your needs. Many of our clients become our friends and return year after year to experience new adventures with us we hope you become a friend of ours also.
This year we will be partnered with the Tarpon Lodge and the Calusa Blueway Festival to bring you the Calusa Costume Ball on October 30. Contact www.calusabluewaypaddlingfestival.com for details and reservations. There is a limited number of tickets for this event so get yours early. This will be part of the 10 day Great Calusa Blueway Festival. On the 31 the Randell Research Center (archeological site of Tampo) will be the host site to the festivals fishing tournament. We are offering guide service and fishing kayak rentals on the site that day and you can make reservations with us.
