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Stand-Up Paddle Boarding in Guatemala: Paddling Through Mangroves
Have you ever done supping? It’s Stand up paddle boarding. It’s an incredible activity and can be done at the beach, lakes, or rivers. Not only that, but it’s pretty relaxing, and you get an incredible view of the area. That’s why I wanted to talk about it, you should definitely try it sometime. Here’s my full experience doing stand-up paddle boarding in Guatemala.
What is stand-up paddle boarding?
Well, I mean, it pretty much defines itself. It’s not technically a surfboard, although a lot of people think that it’s very similar. Stand-up paddle boarding is an actual sport. You do need to have a good, solid board. There are many kinds of boards. Obviously, when you go stand-up paddle boarding, you need to be in a place where it’s either mangrove or estuary. Those are the preferred places to go. You can go to the ocean, obviously, you could do it on a Lake, on a very calm river, but it’s best where there are not a lot of tides.
I personally have never been on a stand-up paddle board, and it’s funny because we used to live in Costa Rica and in Costa Rica, stand-up paddle boarding is a really popular thing, it just looks so dangerous and scary, and just totally out of my comfort zone.
That was until on my 48 9th birthday, I told my family that for my birthday I wanted to go to the beach and the number one thing, the only real thing that I want to do is a stand-up paddle boarding tour. My kids are one. My youngest is eleven, my oldest is 17.
They are really picky about what they do. However, for my birthday, they cannot tell me no.
Stand-Up Paddleboard in Guatemala
This was a family adventure and because we live in Guatemala, we went to Paredon Beach. Paredon beach is a really popular place where you could go and do quite a lot of things.
Obviously, this place is number one for surfing in Guatemala, another great activity to do there is horseback rides on the beach. But you could also go paddle boarding because there’s this huge system of mangroves that are located all around.
Tour Price
My husband and I found this amazing tour. It was with this guy named Sean, and it was a private tour that cost like $60 for the four of us to go for 3 hours. I mean, it was incredible.
The tour has the newest paddle boards, and you can just tell that Sean loves it with all his soul. So that is a contagious thing, right? And it’s his own thing. It’s not like the whole agency where they have different guides, and it’s important when you go with the local guide.
I really prefer that local tour feeling.
Paddleboarding Through Mangroves
Anyway, he picks us up at our hotel, and we walked over to the mangroves, which was less than a five-minute walk. We got on our paddle boards and even my eleven-year-old was able to have his own. It obviously depends on your kid’s age, but pretty much it’s really kid-friendly.
So we got on the paddle boards, and we just took off, and he was like, okay, we’re going to first begin the first part of the tour it’s going to be mainly sitting down, not really standing, and the reason why is that he took us through these unbelievable little trails mangroves where the mangroves were literally all hanging over our heads.
We were ducking; they were just narrow enough for our paddle board to go through these, I guess you could call them mini canals. It was one of the most beautiful experiences that I ever had, and then you come out into this it’s kind of like a river that leads or becomes an estuary that leads into the water into the ocean, but it’s a long way to the ocean, so it’s really calm and that’s where you can do the stand-up part.
My family got the stand-up I mean literally in minutes for me, it took me quite a lot of balancing. You have to know where to stand and whatnot but once you get it, it is so fun and if you do it strong enough you can really get a pretty great workout so if you have a chance to ever go stand-up paddle boarding I cannot recommend it enough it is really one of the most amazing really hands-on nature experiences. You are literally feeling one with nature, and it’s just hard to put into words
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