SANIBEL ISLAND -- The two-man kayaks lurched forward, backward, sideways. They spun around, bumped into one another and drifted into a thicket of mangroves.

Luckily, the water was only about 3 feet deep.

''This is your paddle,'' shouted the Tarpon Bay Explorers guide, holding up the black plastic stick with a wedge on each end. ''Remember, the person in the back steers,'' he yelled. ``I don't want to see anybody in the front trying to steer.''

With that, I lifted my paddle out of the water and rested it atop the fir-green kayak.

I felt the warm sun on my arms. I sipped a nice drink from my water bottle.

''A little to the left,'' I directed my husband who was paddling in the stern. ``Watch out for that branch.''

Oh, boy. Kayaking was going to be fun.

In case you haven't noticed, kayaking while on vacation is all the rage.

Tourists are kayaking at the Grand Canyon, in Honduras and over in Crete. They're paddling off the coast of Big Sur, up in Tuscany and in Alaska next to the icebergs. You can take 15-day sea kayak trips on the open water or rent a kayak for a quick paddle on a placid pond.

The big draw?

''People want solitude, peace and quiet in their busy lives,'' says Bruce Clevenger, a kayak instructor at Quiet World Sports in Jackson, Mich. ``Plus, it used to be that people thought of kayaks as scary and tippy. But recreational kayaks are very stable.''

About 6.6 million Americans went kayaking in 2006, according to the Outdoor Industry Association, which has tracked a gradual rise in participation since the 1990s. The trouble is, kayaking is a bit harder than it looks for anyone out of shape -- or for anyone who has trouble sitting on their bottom in the bottom of a little plastic boat.

I've done a lot of canoeing, so I wasn't exactly a novice. But I decided to warm up my kayak skills on the 2-hour Tarpon Bay Kayak Trail Tour ($30), no experience needed.

What a warm-up.

''If you run into the mangroves, don't panic,'' shouted our guide, Dave, watching one couple veer into the bushes. ``And if you see someone stuck, help them.''

We set off. I resumed paddling up front to help us gain speed. After a ¾-mile paddle along the southern edge of Tarpon Bay, we came to Commodore Creek and the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge, where all 11 kayaks were supposed to turn the corner into the creek. The tide was rising and the current was kind of swift for some. Some kayaks were drifting away.

Our guide threw an anchor over the side of his kayak.

''Bump into me,'' he said. ``Hold onto me.''

So we clanked and scraped and hung onto each other until everyone was situated.

'It's `the dingbats go kayaking,' '' my husband grumbled.

What was he grousing about? I was having a great time.

MILES OF TRAILS

Seriously, southwest Florida is a fantastic place to kayak, with miles of interesting little rivers and estuaries and enough birds to fill a thousand aviaries.

In fact, southwest Florida has embraced the kayak fad with a 190-mile kayaking route called the Great Calusa Blueway.

The route with the lilting name was invented not by paddlers but by tourism officials in 2003, who wanted to create for kayakers and canoeists something similar to the so-called greenway routes that bicyclists can take elsewhere.

They named it after the Calusa Indians who lolled, loved, fished and died in this part of Florida for more than 1,000 years until the 1700s.

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