The kitesurfing atlas

Published destination guides

• Antsiranana & Northern Madagascar, Madagascar

  A thirty-square-kilometre emerald lagoon at Madagascar's northern tip, reached past Diego Suarez and almost nobody else.

• Aruba

  A desert island in the southern Caribbean where the trade winds blow almost year-round and the leeward beaches stay flat.

• Atins & Lençóis Maranhenses, Brazil

  A village at the edge of a desert of white dunes and rainwater lagoons, reached by boat or 4x4 and by very few people.

• Auckland, New Zealand

  A city built between two harbours, with flat sheltered water inside the Waitematā and open coast on either side.

• Sanur, Bali, Indonesia

  Bali's easiest water: a shallow, reef-protected lagoon on the quiet east coast, twenty minutes from the airport.

• Barbados South Coast, Barbados

  The windiest corner of the eastern Caribbean, with reef-sheltered flats on the south coast and swell outside them.

• Barr Al Hikman, Oman

  Three shallow turquoise lagoons on Oman's empty east coast, blown by the khareef monsoon through the Gulf summer.

• Bonaire, Caribbean Netherlands

  A flat, dry Dutch Caribbean island best known for its diving, with steady trades and a shallow west-coast kite beach.

• Boracay, Philippines

  A slender Philippine island with a famous west-facing beach and, fifteen minutes across it, the bay the Amihan blows over all winter.

• Cabarete, Dominican Republic

  The Caribbean's original kite town on the north coast of the Dominican Republic, with 250 to 300 rideable days a year.

• Cape Hatteras, United States

  A thin barrier island off North Carolina with shallow sound on one side and the best waves on the American east coast on the other.

• Cape Town & Blouberg, South Africa

  Table Mountain behind you and the South Atlantic in front, on the wind the locals call the Cape Doctor.

• Cartagena Coast, Colombia

  A walled colonial city on the Caribbean, where the trade winds blow from December to April and the beaches start fifteen minutes from the old town.

• Christchurch, New Zealand

  A long Pacific beach and shallow tidal flats on the edge of a South Island city, with strong sea breezes in summer.

• Coron & Calamianes Islands, Philippines

  Limestone islands and wreck-diving water in northern Palawan, with an Amihan season from November to March.

• Cumbuco, Brazil

  A fishing village on the Ceará coast that the trade winds turned into a kitesurfing town, with glassy lagoons a buggy ride down the sand.

• Curaçao

  A mangrove-fringed lagoon on the wild north-east coast, on an island whose other side is all colonial harbour and reef diving.

• Dakhla, Morocco

  A forty-five kilometre lagoon between the Sahara and the Atlantic, with wind on around 340 days a year.

• Diani Coast, Kenya

  Kenya's south coast: white sand behind a barrier reef, two monsoons a year, and the safari plains a short flight inland.

• El Gouna, Egypt

  A resort town of islands and lagoons on the Red Sea, built around the water, with thermal wind that arrives on schedule.

• El Médano, Tenerife, Spain

  A low-key wind town under a volcanic cone on Tenerife's southern tip, where the trades blow on roughly two days in three, all year.

• Essaouira, Morocco

  A walled eighteenth-century port on the Atlantic, famous for wind long before kitesurfing, with three very different beaches within twenty minutes.

• Fuerteventura, Spain

  A long, bare Atlantic island of dunes and lava where the trade winds blow hardest between May and August.

• Gold Coast, Australia

  Flat water behind sandbars in the Broadwater, and a demanding lagoon spot at Currumbin — with the tide deciding both.

• Hamata & Wadi Lahami, Egypt

  A vast shallow lagoon in the Egyptian deep south, two and a half hours from the nearest airport and almost entirely empty.

• Hel Peninsula, Poland

  A sandspit reaching into the Baltic, with one of Europe's largest beginner lagoons on its sheltered side.

• Isla Blanca & Cancún, Mexico

  A sandbar north of Cancún with a shallow lagoon on one side and the Caribbean on the other, half an hour from the airport.

• Jericoacoara & Preá, Brazil

  A fishing village in a national park where the streets are sand, and fourteen kilometres of beach downwind that made it a kitesurfing pilgrimage.

• Kalpitiya Peninsula, Sri Lanka

  A peninsula on Sri Lanka's north-west coast where wind accelerates through the Palk Strait and blows for nine months a year.

• Karikari Peninsula, New Zealand

  White silica sand and turquoise water in New Zealand's Far North, with sandbars that stay mirror-flat in 25 knots.

• Koh Phangan, Thailand

  A Gulf of Thailand island with three separate wind seasons, where the kiting is quiet, warm and unhurried.

• La Guajira, Colombia

  The desert peninsula at Colombia's northern tip, where the Wayuu live and the wind blows for ten months of the year.

• La Ventana & El Sargento, Mexico

  A desert bay on the Sea of Cortez where the winter El Norte funnels down the coast and the whale sharks arrive with it.

• Langebaan, South Africa

  A shallow turquoise lagoon an hour and a half up the coast from Cape Town, and one of the best places anywhere to learn.

• Le Morne, Mauritius

  A UNESCO-listed basalt monolith, a turquoise lagoon held by reef, and Mauritius's finest hotels within minutes of the water.

• Lisbon Coast, Portugal

  A capital city with a lagoon, a twenty-kilometre beach and one of Europe's heaviest wave spots inside an hour's drive.

• Ekas Bay, Lombok, Indonesia

  A remote bay in southern Lombok with a reef-held lagoon, butter-flat at low tide and breaking over the reef at high.

• Los Barriles, Mexico

  A wide, empty sand beach on Baja's east cape, with side-shore wind, no current and miles of room.

• Maui, United States

  The north shore of Maui, where the trades funnel between two volcanoes and the sport largely learned to fly.

• Mui Ne, Vietnam

  Red sand dunes above a long Vietnamese beach, with wind that the desert behind it makes stronger than the forecast.

• Naxos, Greece

  A Cycladic island where wind funnels between Naxos and Paros and arrives stronger than the forecast.

• Dutch Delta Coast, Netherlands

  Dams, sea inlets and shallow lakes in the Dutch south-west, with wind most of the year and rules worth reading first.

• Nin & Zadar Coast, Croatia

  A shallow Adriatic lagoon beside a mediaeval town, with the maestral in summer and the bora in spring.

• Northern Portugal Coast, Portugal

  The Minho coast north of Porto, where the Nortada blows all summer over river lagoons and Atlantic beaches.

• Nosy Be, Madagascar

  Madagascar's holiday island, with reliable south-east trades from April to November and rainforest, lemurs and diving alongside.

• Paracas, Peru

  A desert bay on the Peruvian coast beside a national reserve, with wind on around three hundred days a year.

• Paros, Greece

  Two Cycladic beaches on the Meltemi, with a compact eight-week high season in July and August.

• Pelješac Peninsula, Croatia

  A windy channel between Pelješac and Korčula, and one of the busiest wind-sports villages on the Adriatic.

• Pemba & Murrebue, Mozambique

  Thirty kilometres of turquoise lagoon in northern Mozambique, where you will often be the only person on the water.

• Phan Rang, Vietnam

  A shallow lagoon inside a reef with waves outside it, and some of the strongest reliable wind in South East Asia.

• Port Douglas, Australia

  Trade winds over a wide, shallow tropical beach in Far North Queensland, with the reef and the rainforest either side.

• Rameswaram, India

  A pilgrimage island in the Gulf of Mannar with two wind seasons and over three hundred rideable days a year.

• Rhodes, Greece

  Where the Meltemi meets two seas at the southern tip of Rhodes, and a sandbar divides flat water from waves.

• Safety Bay, Australia

  The Fremantle Doctor arriving at two in the afternoon, over flat water south of Perth that trains professionals.

• Sal Island, Cape Verde

  A low, sun-bleached Atlantic island where the trade winds run all winter and the swell that made Ponta Preta famous arrives with them.

• Santa Verónica, Colombia

  A sheltered flat-water bay and a wave beach beside it, an hour from Cartagena on Colombia's Atlántico coast.

• Sardinia, Italy

  A Mediterranean island with wind on both ends — a shallow flat-water lagoon in the south-west, and one of Italy's windiest straits in the north.

• Western Sicily, Italy

  Over 250 windy days a year on Sicily's south-west coast, on a wave beach well away from the crowds.

• Soma Bay & Safaga, Egypt

  A shallow Red Sea lagoon that consistently blows harder than its neighbours, with rescue boats a requirement rather than a courtesy.

• Banda Aceh, Indonesia

  Jungle and mountains behind a warm Sumatran coast, with two wind windows and almost no other kiters.

• Lakey Peak, Sumbawa, Indonesia

  A legendary Indonesian wave on a remote stretch of Sumbawa, with strong wind from July to October and nothing else to do.

• Tarifa, Spain

  A walled Moorish town at the tip of Andalusia, where two seas meet and the wind has drawn riders for thirty years.

• Turks & Caicos, Turks and Caicos Islands

  Miles of waist-deep water off Providenciales, with an onshore trade wind that blows on nine days in ten for ten months of the year.

• Tuscany & Maremma Coast, Italy

  Shallow, beginner-friendly bays on the Tyrrhenian coast, backed by the wine country and hill towns of the Maremma.

• Wānaka, New Zealand

  Alpine freshwater under the Southern Alps, where the wind is less reliable than the scenery is extraordinary.

• Watamu & Kilifi Coast, Kenya

  Kenya's quieter coast north of Mombasa, where the Kaskazi blows side-onshore over a reef lagoon from December to March.

• Northern Yucatán Coast, Mexico

  A quiet fishing village and a long shallow coast on the Gulf side of Yucatán, with some of Mexico's most dependable wind.

• Zanzibar East Coast, Tanzania

  A reef-held lagoon on the Indian Ocean side of Zanzibar, where the tide empties the flats twice a day and two monsoons divide the year.