We could describe the Bilene lagoon to you over three pages. We actually did: a whole page about the spot, another about the activities, a third about the evenings. Let's be honest for a second — nobody reads all that before picking their next kite destination.
So we filmed it instead. A drone, a few minutes, and the spot speaking for itself. The video did rather well on Instagram, which settles the argument once and for all: our paragraphs will never compete with a wide shot over 15 km of empty turquoise water.
Watch the video on Instagram The video is narrated in French — translated versions are on the way. In the meantime, the images need no subtitles.
15 km of lagoon, closed off from the ocean
This is what the drone shows in a single shot, and what text takes a paragraph to explain: Bilene is a 15 km lagoon, open to the Indian Ocean but shielded from its waves and tides. A sand bar does the work. The result: turquoise water, no swell, no current, and a wind that settles in and holds.
For a kiter, that translates simply. More flat water than you know what to do with, downwinders that go on forever, direct access to the wave spot on days you fancy a change — and the centre sitting right on the beach. You pump, you walk down, you ride. No carrying gear across a car park, no waiting for a slot in a crowded riding area.
The detail you can't see in the footage: how many people are in the window. There aren't any. The spot in full →
The Speed Spot, twenty minutes upwind
The moment everyone picked up on in the comments is the mouth of the lagoon. A huge sand bar, perfect flat water on one side, the ocean on the other, and nothing around it. You get there by kite, in about twenty minutes if you're up for it — otherwise by boat.
Victor Hayes, who came to ride with us, summed it up better than any of our pages ever did: "it's like our freestyle spot in Brazil, except there's nobody here". It's glassy, it's enormous, and most of the time you have it to yourself. If you came for speed or for freestyle on mirror-flat water, that's where it happens.
Learning here: 1 km² of water, one metre deep
The teaching area you fly over in the video is hard to find anywhere else: one square kilometre of warm water, one metre deep, with no tide and no current. You can stand up everywhere, you don't drift, and the wind stays steady while you learn to work your window.
Lessons are taught by an IKO instructor, with current-year gear, radios, helmets and impact vests. None of that shows up on drone footage, but it's the difference between a week of real progress and a week spent walking back upwind. The kite school →
And on days without wind?
There aren't many, but the video shows what we do with them too. The Limpopo lighthouse, the second tallest in Africa, at the end of an hour of 4x4 tracks. A boat trip out to the lagoon mouth, home to a family of sea turtles — and, between September and November, the whales migrating along the coast. A braai (whatever you do, don't call it a barbecue here) cooked by a South African by the ocean, after a run through the dunes in a 4x4.
There's also the Macia market, traditional cooking with Félix, the church singing on Sunday mornings, big game fishing, paddling up the rivers that feed into the lagoon. And massages under the palm shelters, facing the sea, for legs that have taken a beating. All the activities →
The evenings, once the drone is packed away
The evening shots at the end aren't staged. The Palmeiras beach bar, feet in the sand, is aperitif headquarters: a 2M — the local beer — and the last riders finishing their session in front of you while you sit back in a deckchair.
Once a week we fire up the BKC Team Barbecue, with the sunset over the lagoon as a backdrop. And every other evening we take whoever fancies it to our favourite places in the village: small local restaurants, no menu in four languages, where you eat frango com batata and matapa. Restaurants and evenings out →
When to come
The season runs from September to March, with an average of 90% of days on the water. The rest of the year it drops to a "miserable" 60%. So the question isn't really whether you'll get to ride.
If the video made you want to come, here's what's next: preparing your trip (flights, ETA, transfer, what to pack) and the prices. And if you're still torn between destinations, we made the comparison: 5 new kitesurf destinations with (almost) nobody on them.
See you on the water!
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