There isn't another river like it anywhere else in the world.

Ninety-seven km wide and with an average depth of just 15 cm, its whiskey-colored waters drift so slowly across the flat face of southern Florida that for centuries most people did not know the waters were moving at all.

The river itself has no name. It rises at Okeechobee, the second-largest lake in the U.S., then lazes south through some 4 million hectares of rippling saw grass, dwarf cypress stands and mangrove forest before mingling with the salt water of the island-studded Gulf of Mexico. It offers some of the most spellbinding scenery imaginable, much of it accessible only by boat or canoe.