Austin Duck Adventures
- 602 E 4th Street Austin
- $25-50
- M-F 10 a.m., 12 p.m., 2 p.m. | Sat. 10 a.m., 11 a.m., 12 p.m., 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 3 p.m.. 4 p.m. | Sun. 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — You’ve probably seen the Austin Duck Adventures tours around town. If you’re lucky enough to be standing on the side of the road when one passes, you’ll likely get “quacked at,” meaning the folks on board blow into whistle-like duck bills at you.
The tours also draw eyes when the bus, which doubles as a large pontoon boat, drives right into the lake, where the tour continues.
Austin Duck Boat Adventures (KXAN photo/Grace Reader) 
“Captain Bob” shares Austin facts during a more than an hour long Austin Duck Boat Adventure tour (KXAN photo/Grace Reader) 
Riders of the Austin Duck Boat Adventures tour wave at people on the street as they pass by. Riders are also given duck whistles to “quack” at people passing by (KXAN photo/Grace Reader) 
A rider of the Austin Duck Boat Adventures tour takes a photo of the Texas State Capitol building (KXAN photo/Grace Reader)
“I had to get out of the house today because we had some work being done, so I thought it would be fun to go on a duck tour that I never go on,” said Barbara Glaser Fryer, a woman who has lived in Austin since the 80s and was on the tour last week.
Even Glaser Fryer admitted, with her extensive Austin knowledge, there were things she learned on the tour. It’s something Robert “Captain Bob” Ojeda promises will be the case if you decide to give it a whirl.
“You’re out here for 75 minutes and you get to know things that would take you about a week to discover,” he said. “I promise you, you’ll find things out about the city that you didn’t know.”
Here are five things we learned when we hopped on for a ride:
- The Texas State Capitol is taller than the U.S. Capitol building by roughly 15 feet
- There are a lot of famous people that live in Austin and we learned about them. We most notably enjoyed hearing about Sandra Bullock’s waterside living situation
- Austin City Hall is made to look like an armadillo from the side
- The Frost Bank has an owl face on it. There’s a conspiracy theory about how it got there that involves someone getting rejected from the University of Texas and attending Rice University instead, which has an owl as its mascot. Sadly, a quick Google search shows that theory is false
- Austin is known as the live music capital of the world (we know this one), but also the food truck capital of the world and the tattoo capital of the world
This story is part of a KXAN series highlighting Central Texas activities — you can see our full list on our “Central Texas Things to Do” page. Do you have an idea of something we should profile? Email us at reportit@kxan.com.
