My family and I booked onto the 10am kayaking tour with Cocoa Kayaking at Titusville in the hope of seeing some wildlife. We knew the tour couldn’t guarantee wildlife, but we were hopeful.
Upon arriving at the launch site, we were greeted by our friendly guide Cricket. After a few safety points and getting everything ready, we were ready to start our adventure.
Once all aboard our single kayaks, we set off up a boating lane to head to the manatee observation area. It was evident very quickly that there were Manatees here. After a short period of time of being in the area, the Manatees started to pop up their noses, flippers, etc to get a better look at who we were and what we were doing. There seemed to be a good 6 to 10 Manatees in this area (including a couple of baby Manatees) and they were very friendly and inquisitive. One Manatee actually took a shine to our son’s kayak and started to push his kayak around the area for a little bit.
After around 35/40 minutes in this area interacting with the Manatees, we started to kayak off down for the rest of the tour. Cricket was very engaging and was always on hand with some interesting facts and information about the area and the wildlife. She was also happy to engage in general chit chat which definitely made everything feel a little more relaxed.
The entire tour was excellent, we didn’t manage to see the Alligator in the area, but did see Manatees, Stingray, Horseshoe Crabs and lots of fish which were jumping out of the Indian River.
As the tour was ending, we started to paddle back to the launch area, when we saw some Dolphins quite a distance away. However to our delight, the Dolphins got closer and closer and at one point were within reach of our kayaks. One Dolphin actually put on a show by chasing after some fish in the river which was awesome to see.
All in all, this kayaking tour was sensational. It was more than we had expected and whilst it was quite hard work in the searing heat, the 2 hour tour was fantastic. Many thanks again to our wonderful guide Cricket. She helped make the tour be everything that it was and was lead photographer for the tour also.
This is definitely something that we will be doing again at a future trip back to Florida.