Sunset Kayak & Bats Experience

Experience one of Austin's most remarkable evenings from the best seat in the city—the water.

Tailored especially for guests of The Driskill, your evening begins with a relaxed paddle along Lady Bird Lake as your local guide brings the city around you to life—from Austin's history and the ecology of the river to the remarkable story of the Mexican free-tailed bats.

As sunset approaches, we'll make our way beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge and settle in on the water. During peak season, as many as 1.5 million bats call the bridge home, forming the world's largest urban bat colony.

After the emergence, we'll paddle beneath the downtown lights back to the kayak shop, where you'll have access to restrooms and anything you left securely stored before the tour.

The Bats of Congress Avenue Bridge

Each spring, Austin welcomes back one of its most unlikely residents: 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats, drawn north from Mexico to roost beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge. It is the largest urban bat colony in the world, and it exists just steps from The Driskill. When the bridge was rebuilt in 1980, engineers unknowingly created the perfect roost — narrow, sun-warmed crevices that mimic a cave. The bats found it within a few short years, and Austin has never been the same since. Every summer evening, as the sky turns gold over Lady Bird Lake, that colony rises together into the dusk — a sight best witnessed from a kayak on the water below.

The Bridge That Became a Home

The Congress Avenue Bridge — officially the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge — spans the Colorado River at Lady Bird Lake in the heart of downtown Austin. Its 1980 renovation added expansion joints roughly sixteen inches deep and just one inch wide, an engineering detail with no wildlife intent behind it. Those narrow gaps turned out to be ideal bat habitat: warm, dark, and safe from predators. What began as public alarm in the early 1980s — Austinites once feared the bats as a health threat — became civic pride once Bat Conservation International stepped in to educate the city. Today, the bridge draws roughly 140,000 visitors a year and is one of Austin's defining landmarks, best viewed from the water as your kayak glides beneath it at sunset.

Why the Migration Happens

Every year between March and October, female Mexican free-tailed bats migrate north from central Mexico to Central Texas to give birth and raise their young — a phenomenon biologists call a maternity colony. At Congress Avenue Bridge, they raise an estimated 750,000 pups each summer, making it one of the largest maternity colonies of any bat species on Earth. Each evening at dusk, the colony streams out from beneath the bridge in search of insects, consuming up to 30,000 pounds of agricultural pests in a single night. By late fall, cooler temperatures send the colony back south to Mexico, making the sunset emergence a strictly seasonal spectacle — one best experienced from the water, paddling quietly as the sky fills with bats.

Make a Night of It

The Driskill Hotel places you right in the middle of downtown Austin, where the city hums just beyond our doors. After the Sunset & Bat Kayak Experience, you might wander out into the music and late-night energy, or decide to stay put a while longer, settling into The Driskill Bar, lingering over dinner at The Driskill Grill, or easing into a quiet nightcap inside The Victorian.

And if one evening is not enough, stay the night. After all, some experiences are best savored a little longer.