The Best Ways to See Charleston by Water

The Charleston region’s allure lies in its rare blend of coastal beauty and centuries-old heritage. Live oaks draped in Spanish moss, bursts of camellias, and artfully tended gardens invite visitors into a landscape rich with story. A visit can be a choose-your-own-adventure journey. Begin at Boone Hall, among the nation’s oldest working plantations; on the green, playing a round on one of the area’s 20 championship golf courses, including the Wild Dunes Harbor Course; or with an up-close look at local conservation efforts inside the South Carolina Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Care Center.

But to truly understand the Lowcountry, follow the water. That’s what Afar’s Unpacked host Aislyn Greene does for a recent episode—tracing Charleston’s tidal pathways to uncover how its maritime world continues to shape life here, past and present.

Kayak Shem Creek

Courtesy of Explore Charleston

Shem Creek—a tidal creek that threads its way into the historic Old Village of Mount Pleasant, 15 minutes from downtown Charleston—is equal parts working waterway and local watering hole. Wood-planked patios hover above the water, offering diners and bar-goers a front-row view of shrimp boats easing in, paddleboarders drifting past, and dolphins surfacing between wakes. By midday, it buzzes. But in the morning, as seagulls dive for a first bite, the scene is still, which is when Greene met Benjamin Toy, co-owner of Nature Adventures, for a sunrise kayak tour.

Explore Charleston

The Charleston region’s waterways are teeming with life, says Toy. Think shrimp, flounder, trout, sharks, alligators, and even the occasional manatee. “The only real threats,” he jokes, “are oysters and barnacles.” A tricolored heron wings overhead as the sun illuminates the spartina grass, turning the marsh into a swath of molten gold. Then, as Greene and Toy paddle toward open water, dolphins begin strand-feeding along the banks—a quintessential Lowcountry spectacle. Quiet channels like these are only the beginning in the Lowcountry, that low-lying labyrinth of salt marsh and sea-kissed land stretching the South Carolina coast.

Courtesy of Explore Charleston

Go fossil hunting on Charleston’s barrier islands

Cade Kaufmann is a naturalist in the greater Charleston region who Greene calls the Indiana Jones of fossil hunting. She joined him and Charleston Outdoor Adventures owner Joe Lott on a skiff bound for Morris Island, one of the region’s wild offshore sandbars just north of Folly Island.

The windswept beach is a sanctuary for the ocean’s castoffs: shark teeth, whale and dolphin bones, sea turtle shells, prehistoric marine organisms, and even Ice Age fossils. (Yes, mammoths and saber-toothed cats once cruised these waters.) Layered among them are relics from the island’s Civil War chapters—19th-century buttons, glass bottles, and hand-blown pipes. (The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon and Fort Moultrie help put artifacts into context, displaying them at sites where the region’s Revolutionary history took place.)

It’s the meditative act of studying the sand for echoes of another era that hooked Greene most. Each find feels like a quiet conversation with deep time, a reminder that Charleston’s story extends beyond its cobblestones and is also written in the tide-washed edges of its wildest islands.

Courtesy of Explore Charleston/Andrew Cebulka

Hungry for more, Greene booked a second barrier island experience, a boat ride to Bulls Island with Coastal Expeditions. An uninhabited part of Cape Romain, it’s home to Boneyard Beach, a spooky display of driftwood. “It’s wilderness with a capital W,” says captain Nick Johnson. One of three Class 1 Wilderness areas on the East Coast under the Wilderness Act, this marine-rich habitat is also to thank for the Charleston area’s briny bounty, which visitors can taste at area oyster roasts or via seafood towers at spots including the Darling Oyster Bar, the Ordinary, Hank’s Seafood Restaurant, or Marbled & Fin.

As Greene discovers, the thing about the harbor, the tidal creeks, and the barrier islands that cradle the Charleston region is that they flavor everything—from the food and the history to the way travelers move through this place, carried always by the pull of the water.

To learn more, listen to the Unpacked podcast episode, “To Understand the Soul of This Southern City, Head for the Water.”