Diani Beach

Diani lies on the Kenyan coast south of Mombasa, seventeen kilometres of white coral sand facing the Indian Ocean across a fringing reef. It is the country's principal beach destination and sits within an hour of a wildlife economy that operates on a completely different scale inland.

The reef governs everything. It runs parallel to the shore a few hundred metres out, breaking the ocean swell and leaving a lagoon of shallow, warm, extremely clear water. At low tide the reef flat is exposed and the sea withdraws a long way; at high tide the beach narrows and the swimming is straightforward. The tidal range here is large enough that any given photograph of Diani is a photograph of one particular hour.

The sand is fine white coral, and the coastal forest behind holds the Angolan colobus, an endangered monkey whose population here is small and fragmented; rope bridges strung across the beach road to reduce road deaths are a visible and slightly surreal feature of the place. Kite surfing has grown substantially because the Kaskazi and Kusi monsoon winds are reliable.

Development is low-rise and spread out: hotels and lodges set back behind palm and casuarina, with beach boys selling excursions on the sand — a persistent presence that visitors either find sociable or wearing, and a licensing scheme exists to regulate it. Galu and Chale further south are the same reef and the same sand with a fraction of the traffic, and Kisite-Mpunguti marine park near Shimoni is where the diving actually is — an hour and a half down the coast toward the Tanzanian border.

Check the tide before anything else. At low water the reef flat empties and the sea withdraws several hundred metres; at high water it is a straightforward swim off white sand. The colobus bridges over the road are worth looking up for, and the beach boys are a fact of the place that visitors either enjoy or learn to decline pleasantly.