9 days in Tarifa

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July 12th 2011

Published: July 12th 2011

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Dan and Jax

Tarifa Old Town

Hola folks,
This is an update from our last 9 days in Tarifa, South Spain. For those of you who don’t know Tarifa is the mecca for windsurfing and kitesurfing as both the headlands from Spain and Morocco (only 14km away) create a funnel for the wind to howl through. This has been ‘THE place to be’ for windsurfers for the last 25years and we meet plenty of men in their late 50s who have been visiting every summer.
There are generally two types of wind directions in Tarifa Levante and Poinente. We had a two days of Levante, Dan got grumpy as even though it meant putting up his 9m kite (small one), the ocean was very choppy (can’t go fast, pull jumps and you get choppy water in your face). Also having about 100 other kiters on the water doesn’t help either. Day three we found a lagoon and Dan was a happy camper from then on (means flat water). I even kited in Tarifa in the prohibited lagoon (because I don’t like deep water in ocean).
The rough plan was to stay for 4-5days then head up towards to Barcelona again. What ended up happening was that we

Tarifa Old Town

had been staying in a field where campers and vans (few tents) congregate and it’s a little bit like the field that time forgot. It’s full of society’s rejects, hippies, and hard core sports people. A real mix of people, but they don’t shower, just a maori shower and swim. Each day it became harder to leave as we had made camp, rigged up a clothes line, got our table and chairs out. By day 9 the wind had stopped so we gapped it.
Meet some really interesting people. Ozone retailer was a German fun boy called Bernard who had a long pony tail, shaved chest and seemed like he loved his life. On the field Dan helped out Vince (UK) who was new to kiting and had a kite issue – he later took us out to dinner as payment which was awesome! Final mention is Stefan (Dutch) who lives in Amsterdam, has sorted us out with a place to park the van and stay the night 15min bike into the centre city!
Now we have finally made it back up to Barcelona (Castelldefells) in two days. Very long days driving in Kirbit but it was a long distance