We’ve been talking for YEAR about getting kayaks. There was a lot of discussion about what specifics we wanted. Originally we were looking at sea kayaks with covered hatches and a rim for a spray skirt. Then we realized that we are living (nearly) in the tropics. The water here won’t have you hypothermic in under 5 minutes, we will be mostly in protected bays, and the weather is typically nice (no rain).
We got two “sit-on-top” type kayaks. They are not super fancy, or technical, but they have already provided a TON of fun.
Our first adventure was trying to figure out the rack to put them on top of the beach car. It is a VERY tall car, and the roof rack did not easily fit the J-bar kayak racks. Much cursing, and then even more cogitation as to HOW we were going to get the kayaks all the way up into the J-bars, but we finally did it!
We’ve been out to two different bays so far. The first, playa Pichilingue, is a wide open space, protected from the wind by high hills, easy entry. It was a perfect first time out. It didn’t take long to realize that both the Basha and I have really wimpy upper body strength. All the years of yoga I’ve done don’t help with paddling!
The second adventure was to a small bay near playa Balandra. The bay is surrounded by mangroves. There were tons of birds (yellow leg gulls, great blue herons, little blue herons, oyster catchers…), and a LOT of eatin’ size fish!
We paddled out to the channel that connected to playa Balandra, and were warned off by a heavily armed, fully camo’ed military guy. I guess he thought we were trying to “crash” the beach. We didn’t want to GO to the beach, we were just floating and watching.
We turned back into the bay and discovered a meandering passage going through the mangroves. We paddled in quite a way – it got a little tight at times, hard to swing a paddle. Again loads of birds and fish. We didn’t fully explore because our wimpy little arms were starting to hurt, but we’ve decided we really want to go back!
We finished up with a beer under the shade of a beach umbrella, staring at the water and watching a gabillion tiny fiddler crabs wave.
What a great couple of days! Everything looks different from the water!