If you find yourself on a beautiful desert island beach, which happens to be one of the top places in the world for an adrenalin filled (and very expensive) water sport, do you:

a) Spend the equivalent amount of money on generic artwork, beach massages, doughnuts and polished shells. In other words, get lots more ‘stuff’ for your money.
b) Decide that you will spend the next 12 days watching from the beach, convincing yourself that you made the right decision, and it probably isn’t that much fun anyway.
c) Check your bank account, realise it is way beyond your budget, but decide to do it anyway. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity after all.

Of course we chose option c and signed up for 9 hours of lessons. Before the lessons started we spent some time studying the other kite surfers in the water, zooming up and down, hardly falling over and generally making it look easy. How hard could it be???

The answer, of course, is flipping difficult. The first lesson was spent learning about how to set up the kite, flying a smaller practice kite and learning about how to do the sport safely. After our instructor, Emeric (who incidentally used to date a girl from Berwick), decided that we were competent, we got kitted up and went into the sea. The next lesson was spent with a larger kite (7 m2), getting used to being in the water while flying a kite. Once the water gets about waist high, this is about as difficult as it sounds. We learnt how to do body drags, where you loop the kite to get enough drag to pull you through the water. When this is done properly it is a smooth way to move. Inevitably it took me a while to master this though, and I spent at least an hour being launched at full speed out of the water before crashing back into the sea. Graham was much better than I was! A low point for me in the lesson was re-launching the kite after crashing it into the water, only to misjudge how much tension to put in the string. The kite did a huge loop and landed directly opposite from where it started, with a huge crash, about 20 cm from our instructor’s head. Oops!

 

Towards the end of our second lesson, it was decided that we were competent enough to be allowed the board too and after a few wobbly starts Graham was up and away. Admittedly he has only mastered travelling in one direction so far, but he was much better than the rest of the group. All of us only leart how to go one way, so when we crashed we had to walk back to shore with the kite above our heads, holding the board. When the current was strong this could take a long time and was very difficult. On a few occasions I started floating away while flying the kite so someone had to come and anchor me down while we headed back to the beack. So we spent about 20 seconds surfing on the water and ten minutes returning the kite to the start point!

 

Crashing is quite brutal, and usually results in a lot of saltwater being forced up your nose, several nasty bruises and severely dented pride. I crashed too many times to single out a hilarious event. Graham was better, but of course I can remember one of his spectacular crashes. After a very impressive run he decided to give it another go, with the hope of putting in a turn this time too. If only he got that far. He looped the kite round, pushed on his legs and stood up, and then kept on going. He launched directly up off the board and carried on being dragged along in the same trajectory as the kite, arms directly above his head, legs just above the water, for about 20 metres before the kite decided it had other ideas and returned him to the water with a crash. Our instructor was worried and ran over. At about this time Graham emerged spluttering from the water and gave a huge yell of frustration. At this point I realised he was completely fine and started shaking with laughter. Twenty four hours later the thought of it is still making me laugh.

Kite surfing is one of the best things we have done so far on this trip, but also the most exhausting. We both really want to have more lessons and can imagine spending summer holidays kiting in the future. We were very lucky to learn on Zanzibar where both the air and the water are warm and the sea is very shallow for a long way out. As it is so ridiculously expensive, we will just have to spend the next few days watching others enjoying it and plan future trips to the island.