Kitesurfing in Tarifa

You might have been led by the title of this piece to believe that this post is about my harrowing and adventure-filled experience kitesurfing off of the coast of Tarifa, but I must inform you that I have somewhat deceived you. Or, perhaps you simply took the title as a straightforward description of the picture above, in which case you’d be correct! Either way, since you are here now, you might as well stay for a short while!

To be entirely upfront with you, I don’t have a sportive bone in my body. I always wished that I were just a tad bit more athletic, but my attempts to be active in sports never worked out very well. As much as I would love to try an activity such as kitesurfing, my lack of experience in all other sports would probably translate to a gigantic and utterly embarrassing fail. I should say that I don’t experience disappointment over the absence of sports in my life, so you mustn’t get the impression that I am sad about this fact. I have embraced it fully, and I do not put myself through undue stress by attempting sports any longer.

Anyway, back to the photo at hand! I went to Spain with a cousin in the summer of 2012. We traveled around to six cities in Spain over a couple of weeks, with a day trip to Morocco thrown in. The fourth stop of our journey was Tarifa, a city in the far south of Spain. The beaches there are beautiful and warm, and this particular beach had a large crowd of kitesurfers at one end. There were people learning the ropes with instructors, and you could see the experts confidently maneuvering about with their kites. This is one of my favorite photos that I took on the trip, because it is positively the epitome of what I want in a good beach scene. The other reason that I enjoy this photo so much is that whenever I look at it, I have this feeling of peace that I’m watching afar and not out there madly flailing about whilst being towed along by a kite.

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