I had similar problem. If You have user manual profile activation set in ES, then look at Your Mail settings in Joomla Global configuration under Server tab. If using smtp authentification it may take some time to send e-mail.
I am really sorry for the delay of this reply as it is a weekend for us here. Yep, as Steve mentioned it's most likely that your site is trying to connect to the SMTP server and this is where the delays are happening.