Somewhere outside, a banshee wailed and screamed. When I ventured from my resort room to the beach, there was indeed a mounting gale. The usually flat blue-green lagoon was being visited by an invisible fury redistributing sea sand and forcing the palm trees into the brace position. It was far from the tropical idyll folk might fantasise about when planning an island holiday.
‘The rider with the blue kite made a crash-landing,’ came the announcement from the Spanish MC.
‘The wind is a bit gusty.’
Despite this minor setback, it wasn’t long before more than a dozen C-shaped inflatable kites transformed the sky into a colourful aerial ballet, an armada of sails powering through the air. Kiteboarders, it turns out, have different holiday expectations. The wind was precisely why these folk had come to this beach during the mid-year off-season. And why the lagoon had transformed into a massive kiteboarding free-for-all. Jumps, twists, tricks, turns… kites pulling foilers, wing-foilers on paddleboards, and one kiteboarder – French legend Antoine Auriol – giving high-speed piggyback rides.
Auriol, now in his early 40s, is a former world champion who gave up competing to pursue the sport’s more soulful dimensions. He spends his time producing nature and travel documentaries, and creating events that promote the intersection of wind-powered sports and sustainability.
‘What I love about kiteboarding, wingfoiling and paragliding is that we don’t need to do anything to nature in order to enjoy them,’ said Auriol on the beach. ‘These sports are about harnessing the strength of the elements to have fun while enabling you to experience a connection with nature.’
Auriol has kiteboarded in just about every imaginable place on earth, including Udaipur (around the Lake Palace in Rajasthan), on caiman-infested rivers in Guyana (‘I was a little bit afraid!’), across remote lakes in Maine in the US, and in assorted patches of paradise from Tahiti to El Puerto de Santa Maria, in Cádiz, Spain, where he now lives.
C Kite Festival, a wind-fuelled jamboree that held its fourth iteration this year, was Auriol’s vision. He came to test the lagoon just off Palmar on the island’s east coast in November 2021, and despite catching the very last of the winter winds, he fell in love. He says he loved it not only for the waveriding, but also because of how the place made him feel. Hair-raising wind notwithstanding, the lagoon itself is beyond reproach: a broad strip of curved coastline, where a creamy white beach is lapped by cerulean water and bookended by black boulders that are essentially fat blobs of lava that cooled millions of years ago. Pleased as he was by the water’s Pantone hues and the vastness of the lagoon, it was the unmitigated sense of ease with which Mauritius operates that won his heart.
Auriol says Mauritius has an X-factor: its people. ‘I really love the people here, their warmth, lack of aggression and how they treat others. This is something that we don’t have in France. Mauritians speak French but they don’t have that French attitude.’
The festival now sees kiteboarders gather from around the island as well as far-flung corners of the globe annually, to participate in friendly competition and camaraderie, and enjoy the chance to watch and learn from some of the best kiteboarders in the world. Among the regular pros is Louka Pitot, a Mauritian who has been climbing the world champion ranks and is an ambassador for the event.
After living and studying in Montpellier, France, for five years, Pitot moved back to Mauritius in 2022, just before the first C Kite Festival. Despite being a sponsored competitive waverider, he dispels the myth that kiteboarding is purely for adrenaline junkies and thrillchasers. He says his own love of the sport is about finding freedom. ‘When I’m kiting, I’m alone with the ocean, the elements. I feel in charge, unafraid, with not a single stress in the world. There is no one to talk to, and no phones, so there’s no noise, no distractions. When I want to jump, I jump. If I want to chill, I chill. No one can tell me anything. I cannot say that I’m in control, because you’re never in control of the ocean, but I feel 200% in control. So, how does kiteboarding make me feel? Free.’
Auriol says he wanted to create a festival that was not about competing, but rather a get-together where local and international kiteboarders and wingfoilers could collectively celebrate their passion, spend time on the water and on the beach, and socialise after dark with DJs, local musicians, beer and cocktails.
Among the charms of Mauritius is that so many of its resorts, including bright-and-breezy C Mauritius, which hosts the festival, edge directly on to the beach. From your room, you see waves breaking just beyond the reef that shelters the lagoon. Prime conditions include a 30-knot south-southeasterly wind that Mauritian freestyle kiteboarders love. ‘The water’s usually really flat and so crystal clear, you can see fish swimming while you’re flying high above the surface,’ one local told me. ‘The water is always warm, so you never need to put on a wetsuit – it’s just boardshorts, good vibes, and off you go.’
Still relatively undiscovered, Palmar has seen a minor revolution in the last few years, with several new resorts occupying wedges of prime sea-facing territory between the classic beach cottages along the stretch of coast between Trou d’Eau Douce and Belle Mare. People first started kiteboarding here in about 2003, but it flies far beneath the radar compared with the likes of Le Morne, the popular surfing enclave on the southwestern corner of Mauritius that is reputed to be among the world’s top-10 kiteboarding destinations. ‘Everybody goes there to surf a well-known wave called “One Eye”,’ a Mauritian waverider explained. ‘Le Morne gets more wind than anywhere else and it’s a strong wind. Most people who come to Mauritius don’t really know any other spots, which is a blessing for those of us on the east coast – it’s never as crowded as Le Morne.’
Of the lesser-known east coast, Pitot says: ‘There’s no crowd, but there’s wind. I’ve chosen to live in Le Morne because it’s a bit windier than here. I ride waves a lot and Le Morne has great waves. Here, on the east coast, we don’t have surfing waves, it’s just kiting. But it’s shallow so it’s great for learning, and the lagoon is huge so you can go up, down, and visit different spots along the coast. I think that’s special.’
Palmar – a narrow, fairly shallow lagoon, with plenty of flat water and stable 45-degree onshore wind – is especially good for newbie kiteboarders; it’s a great spot to learn and, if you stay inside the lagoon, it’s very safe.
The reef, which protects the lagoon, creates an unstipulated border between friendly kiting territory and a zone where it’s possible to kite, but where – should anything go wrong – a rescue boat can’t venture out to help you.
Auriol ended his competitive career in 2010, saying it just wasn’t important to him anymore. ‘There are many other ways to feel rich inside, other than having the best trick. I love kiteboarding, but not competing. That’s why this festival is not a competition… it’s just about sharing passion.’
Among the festival events is a mass ‘downwind social’ when around 60 kiteboarders inflate their kites, gear up, sign indemnity forms and ride the wind over an extended distance. Kiteboarders of every stripe gather on the beach at Poste Lafayette where the downwind ends. From nine-year-olds to veterans in their 60s, they emerged smiling, despite admitting there’d been some stretches requiring seriously hard work. ‘Beautiful,’ admitted one retiree. ‘And tough.’
The ‘tough’ bit, he said, involved a section across an open channel and a long stretch where the wind had dropped a bit. ‘I had to work the kite quite a lot,’ he said.
Which is, of course, part of the paradox of kiteboarding. It relies on the stroppiest of all the elements. But if the wind drops, you’re left stranded.
Fortunately, for those days when it’s not blowing, Mauritius has plenty of other tricks up its sleeve. ‘When it’s not windy, I have so much choice,’ Pitot said.
‘I can go snorkelling, diving, hiking, paragliding… If I want to go for a swim, I go here. If I want to fish, I go there. Any hike on the island is less than an hour’s drive away. I can be active every single day doing things that I love – in nature.’
