Luckily the two experienced travellers brought their own roof
WIND WATER SAND BEACHES STEADY BREEZE
rack straps, as they soon learnt that slowly is not the only way to describe driving in Kenya. Te drive constituted constantly slamming the brakes and swerving leſt to right avoiding potholes, merging matatus and people pushing huge overloaded carts full of cargo at a turtles pace in the driving lanes. Hiting the roads through Mombasa was the first step to get from the airport to their first destination on Diani Beach. Te only way to get south of Mombasa was to cross the Port of Mombasa by ferry. No bridge exists, and generally 4 boats work to ferry passengers and vehicles across the 500m stretch of water. Te ferries are overloaded with people; they oſten transport 500 passengers or more even though their official capacity is 300. Aſter the 1.5 hour journey the boys arrived at their accommodation and at last set foot on the white sands of Diani Beach. Te breeze was light, but the water colour was stunning. It was only 11.00am, so a decision was made to eat lunch, bring the equipment down to the beach, and then have a first taste of windsurfing in Kenya. Opening up the lunch menu, the African dishes caught their
eyes, and so the two ordered one of every African dish from the menu: Ugali (a white polenta made with cornmeal), Sukuma Wiki
(a type of cooked cabbage), Chapati (East African flatbread) and a Beef stew. Luckily the guys had some foot straps to screw on and equipment
to organize before heading down to the beach, otherwise the drawn out wait for food would have goten the worst of them. Phil and Rossi stayed a bit of a walk from the beach, making the walk down with their equipment a sweaty task. Te path took them through a short forest, over the main street and down a dirt road, and emerging on the beach through Forty Tieves bar a pleasant surprise awaited them; their first ever east-African windsurfing session. Phil and Rossi rigged up 5.4 and 5.2 respectively, hooked up their freestyle boards and hit the water. Te launch there at Diani was very pleasant. Tere was a small box where you can store your equipment safely courtesy of the H20 Extreme Watersports center. H20 has two locations along Diani Beach, one by Forty Tieves and the other about 1km south. Both have a couple beginner sails and boards, while the 2nd center even has enough lightly dated equipment to put together a freeride set-up for a windsurfer or two. Walking into the water, the botom is sandy, and about 600m offshore there is a reef keeping the inside waters flat and friendly. Between the beach and reef there is a mix of sandy and reef botom areas. Te reef outside is
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