Christmas and Kite Surfing in Kilifi

December 23^rd-29^th, 2023 

I had heard good things about a small beach town about an hour north of Mombasa called Kilifi.  From my research online, I also found a highly recommended place to stay called Distant Relatives Ecolodge and decided that it looked like a perfect spot to unwind for 5-6 days over Christmas time.

 

I grabbed a tuk tuk from my rented apartment down to the highway where I was quickly loaded into a matatu (van taxi) which thankfully left about five minutes later.  I lucked out and got the middle front seat, between the driver and a lovely lady in her 60s who was okay with keeping my smaller backpack on her lap as I had my main bag on my lap.

In the tuk tuk:

A typical scene on the highway:

Nice transportation hot rods!

I asked the lady beside me what this plant was.  I couldn't understand her pronunciation but it is used to make cordage and rope.

A baobab tree:

A little over an hour later, we arrived in Kilifi.  Distant Relatives was about 3-4 kilometres north of the main road, close to a river mouth.  I had a tour by the reception lady, Beth, and it did look like I had made a good choice.  I had a big private room with a high, thatched roof.  It had a shower and sink, but strangely no toilet.

The communal areas were nice with an outdoor pool and patio, and indoor eating space and bar, an upper deck with tables, a sand volleyball court and some chill out areas.  Strangely, being only a few days before Christmas, it was a lot quieter than I expected with not that many people staying there.  There were a few afternoons that were super busy at the pool but that was due to day trippers.  One day was a kids’ activity day and another day we were invaded by a big Indian group of 2-4 families.

Christmas itself was a pretty chill day, which was fine with me.  I occasionally like escaping the crazy commercialized holidays back in the Western world.  Sadly, I actually spend a lot of my time at Distant Relatives, including a chunk of Christmas Day, on my laptop working on my bookkeeping for my paragliding business as it was due on December 30^th.  At least it was a nice place to work.  The staff were great, especially brothers George and Brian who looked almost identical, and Janet who worked the morning shift.  Oh yeah, and cool cat Hamisi who was part of the kitchen staff.

My Christmas repose:

An interesting painting on the wall:

The path down to the river by Distant Relatives.

The beach at the inlet.

On Boxing Day, I had booked some kite surfing lessons at a place called Salty’s Kitesurf Village.  It had been a couple of years since my last lessons in Paracas, Peru, so I knew I was going to be rusty.  I lucked out and had Ivan, the owner of the school, guesthouse and restaurant as my instructor for a two-hour lesson.  He was originally from Spain but spent a lot of his childhood and life in Kilifi, so much so that he is fluent in Swahili.  He was a great teacher, and it sure is nice when your instructor is fluent in English, unlike my last lessons in Peru! 

Unfortunately I don't have any videos/pics of my lessons, as I was a bit busy at the time, but here's what the beautiful beach looked like:

My skills came back a bit slower than I expected, but hey, I guess I am becoming an old dog trying to learn new tricks.  In my water starts, I was generally not giving enough power to the kite to get enough speed to be able to start turning upwind.  This is probably something that correlates with my age too, not wanting to do a “Jesus Walk” where you overpower the kite and go flying out of your board and seemingly walk on water.

 

I did have a few good rides but never got to trying to transition and come back the other way, which I had been starting to do in Peru.  On one of our walks back up the beach, I thought about how I hadn’t yet wiped out or lost the board…well what happened next?  You guessed it.  I had a bit of a wipe out and had to body surf back upwind to get my board, which was good practice so I didn’t mind it happening.  Near the end of the lessons my skills seemed to be falling off, probably due to fatigue.  Both Ivan and I decided that it would be nice to finish on a good note, but it was not to be…my last run wasn’t too great but I was still super happy with the lesson.

Salty's bar and restaurant:

My last couple of days at Distant Relatives were relaxing and the place was like the calm before the storm.  On the day I was going to leave, a 12-hour DJ party was starting at 4pm-4am!  German David, who I have run into a few times during my trip, was arriving later on that day, purposefully coming for a music festival for New Year’s called the “Beneath the Baobabs” (a baobab is a strange looking indigenous tree with a super fat trunk).  The ones in this area are specifically the Adansonia Digitata.  The craziest looking ones are only found on Madagascar.

 

So it was time to leave this lovely area before the all night parties with loud DJ bass thumping through the night until the early hours of the morning.  Unfortunately earplugs can’t even drown out that kind of noise.  My kite surfing lesson had made me change my plans a bit though.  I’m going to delay going to Zanzibar and come back to Kilifi for some more lessons…at least that is the hope.