Destination guide
Tarifa, Spain
A walled Moorish town at the tip of Andalusia, where two seas meet and the wind has drawn riders for thirty years.
About Tarifa
Tarifa is the southernmost town in mainland Europe: a walled Moorish settlement on the point where the Atlantic narrows into the Mediterranean, with Africa fourteen kilometres across the water and the Rif mountains visible from the ramparts on a clear morning.
The wind is why the kitesurfing world has come here for three decades, and it arrives in two forms. Levante blows east through the Strait — dry, insistent, side-offshore, commonly 25 to 40 knots — and belongs to experienced riders. Poniente comes off the Atlantic, gentler at 15 to 25 knots and onshore, and is the wind that makes Tarifa hospitable to everyone else. Which of the two is running shapes the day.
North-west of town the coast opens into a long ribbon of pale sand: Los Lances, then Valdevaqueros beneath the dunes, then Punta Paloma. Behind it lies the Andalusian interior — Vejer, the white villages, the sherry bodegas of Jerez — and a forty-minute crossing to Tangier. The season runs May to September, with April, October and November still reliably windy. The water is Atlantic and cool at 15 to 22°C, so a wetsuit belongs in every bag.
When to go
Best months: April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November.
Kite areas
1 distinct riding area documented within this destination.
- Valdevaqueros
Best months: April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November.