In the game
Both trailers put a boat in a mangrove channel. In Trailer 1 it’s a flash: a hull cutting along a creek walled in by roots, spray, birds lifting off. Trailer 2 gives it more room, with Jason running a skiff through the backcountry, water so shallow you can see the bottom and the channel bending out of sight ahead. It’s the shot that made people realize the Keys in this game are somewhere you explore by water.
Fans have matched the look to the Florida Bay backcountry behind the Upper Keys: hundreds of mangrove islands, creeks and shallow basins between Islamorada and the mainland Everglades. The match rests on the water color (a milky turquoise over marl, not the deep blue of the ocean side), the tunnels of red mangrove roots and the total flatness of the horizon. Rockstar hasn’t named any of it.
The real place
Florida Bay is the shallow triangle of water between the Keys and the Everglades, most of it inside Everglades National Park, and much of it only a few feet deep. The islands are mangroves growing on mud, and between them run channels that fishing guides have known and named for a century. Flamingo, at the Everglades end, was a plume-hunting and moonshining outpost before the park took it over.
Being out there is disorienting in the best way. Every island looks the same, the water is too shallow for anything but a skiff or a kayak, and the sound is wind, birds and the tick of the hull on the flats. You’ll see rays, small sharks, ospreys, herons and, if you’re lucky, a crocodile hauled out on a bank. The detail a GTA fan will recognize is the creek that narrows to a green tunnel and then suddenly opens onto a mirror-flat basin, which is exactly the rhythm of the trailer shot.
Go there
Don’t do this alone. The backcountry is a maze with no landmarks, sea grass that will strand a boat at low tide, and no cell signal. Two options work.
The easy one is a guided kayak tour from Robbie’s of Islamorada (MM 77.5) or one of the Key Largo outfitters, usually two to three hours through the mangrove creeks and out to a nearby island like Lignumvitae Key or Indian Key, both state parks with their own history. The ambitious one is a flats charter with a licensed guide, which is how you’ll actually run the channels at speed, and catch a bonefish or tarpon if that’s your thing. Guides book out weeks ahead in winter.
Afterward, eat at Robbie’s on the dock, or drive five minutes to Lorelei for the sunset.
One honest warning: the sun out there is savage, with no shade and full reflection off the water. Long sleeves, a hat, reef-safe sunscreen, twice as much water as you think, and in summer a head net if you stop near the mangroves.
Nearby
- Islamorada’s bayside tiki bars: the tour ends at the dock and the bar is right there.
- Canal homes of the Upper Keys: the skiffs on the lifts behind the houses are what run these channels.
- Seven Mile Bridge: the Middle Keys have their own backcountry, and the bridge is the way there.
Updated September 12, 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us.