Diani Beach · Food

Almost everywhere you would eat is on this road or just off it, from restaurants built out onto the sand to plain roadside cafés, with supermarkets and bakeries in the shopping centres along the way. Nothing on it is more than a short tuk-tuk ride from anywhere else.

Inland on the main road: the market, the butchers and the cheap eating. A plate of ugali, sukuma wiki and stew here costs a fraction of anything beach-side, and this is where you buy fruit rather than paying hotel prices for it.

The quieter cluster of beach hotels and restaurants south of central Diani, around Blue Marlin Beach Hotel. Worth knowing if you are staying at the kite and skydive end and do not want to drive back up the strip for dinner.

Coconut is the coast's defining ingredient: wali wa nazi, rice cooked in coconut milk, and fish in coconut and tamarind sauce. Mishkaki — grilled meat skewers — come off roadside braziers in the evening, and madafu, drinking coconuts, are sold everywhere for small change.