Diani Beach

About 30 kilometres south of Mombasa, in Kwale County you find Kenya’s premier beach destination, Diani Beach. In Diani beach you will find a wide array of upper class hotels such as Leopard Beach hotel, Africana Sea Lodge, The Sands at Nomad, Diani Sea Lodge and many more. Diani Beach is famous for its Pristine Powder-White Sands and the Clear Water: Calm turquoise Indian Ocean waters protected by a barrier reef. The lagoon offers exceptionally calm, crystal-clear, turquoise waters that are as warm as a bath and perfect for swimming.

You immediately get the impression that this is a thriving Ecosystem where the lush coastal forest meets the ocean. And above your head, rare Colobus monkeys are playing in the trees. Even big Baboons live here and sometimes a whole family of them crosses the road. For all these reasons Diani Beach has won the title as the best beach in Africa eight times in eleven years at the World Travel Awards

The combination that sets Diani apart from every other highly-ranked African beach is that you have a genuinely world-class beach. You can experience deep-water coral reef diving and there is consistent trade winds that make it one of Africa’s top kitesurfing destinations. It also has proximity to inland reserves and spectacular marine parks – one of them being Kisite-Mpunguti National Marine Park.

Like everywhere along Kenya’s coast, there is a noticeable difference between high tide and low tide. That means that both the depth of the water as well as the width of the beach changes quite alot between those two extremes. The difference in water depth can be 3-4m. Pulled by the moon, the tide goes out and comes in again every 6 hours so approximately twice a day, with about a half hour delay so they time for high or low tide is always changing! And when the tide comes in you will be swimming in the most perfect waters; clear green/turqouise sea. At low tide the water is so shallow that swimming is prohibited, and if you try, you might end up getting injured from hitting sharp corals or a sea urchin’s long, sharp spikes. Luckily no big fish (or sharks) enters the lagoon inside the reef, so swimming here is quite safe.

When to go to Diani

The air temperature in Diani is usually between 27-32 degrees Celcius during daytime and between 24-28 degrees at night. The warmest time is from November to April. The sea temperature fluctuates between 24-30 degrees depending on the time of day, the depth of the water (tide), the wind and the season. The long rains run from April to June; the short rains from October to November, though these rarely disrupt travel significantly on the coast. However, due to global warming the rainy seasons in Africa have become less predictable.