Where to kitesurf in November

Destinations for November

• Antsiranana & Northern Madagascar, Madagascar

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

• 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.

• 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.

• Cape Town & Blouberg, South Africa

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

• 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.

• 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.

• Gold Coast, Australia

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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Los Barriles, Mexico

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

• Mui Ne, Vietnam

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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Wānaka, New Zealand

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

• 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.