January 19th-21st, 2022
For my last side trip before heading back to Canada, I
decided to return to Paracas to continue my kite surfing lessons. I booked the front seat on the top floor of
the double decker bus and it was a lovely 3 ½ hour journey south of the capital
during a sunny afternoon. The weather
was much better than when I travelled this route in early November and I got to
appreciate the terrain more. Going back
to somewhere you have already visited certainly reduces the stress factor of
backpacking. I knew where the hostel
was, where my favourite restaurant was etc.
You don’t feel like a rookie.
I would assume some kind of Jesus statue south of Lima.
Somebody's little beach home. That's the ocean in the background...hard to tell with the tinted glass from the bus.
Rollin' down the highway.
Nice coastline.
Back in Paracas:
The Malecon:
It was the chef at the restaurant next door's birthday...someone hired a mariachi band to celebrate.
The day after arriving I was picked up by Jorge, one of the
instructors with Jose Luiz’s kite surfing outfit. I had met him briefly back in November but
only did about an hour of lessons with him.
For the next three days, he would be my main guy for the daily two-hour
sessions.
On the first day, it took me a probably about 45 minutes to
shake the rust off and get consistent with my water starts. Then it started to flow and I had some good
rides.
The action on the beach after my first day's lesson:
Near the end of the second lesson, we started to work on
transitions; turning around and coming back the other way without sitting back
down in the water. The trick was to try
and flip the board around so you were on your toe edge for a brief moment
before swinging the kite back in the other direction and then following
it. Well, needless to say, the first
number of times I tried I would either focus on the board and forget about the
kite or the other way around. Finally,
it started to click and I had some decent transitions.
An okay water start:
On the last day, I was going to jokingly ask Jorge if I
could learn how to do jumps. Seemed a
bit early for that, but before I even brought up the suggestion, he stated that
we would try it. Well, that was a bit of
the cart before the horse. I didn’t seem
as in tune with the board and the kite as I was the day before. I eventually got some good transitions in,
and I did have about a 4-5 minute stint of continuous riding but in general I
did perform as well as I had hoped to. I
also had a few good runs upwind, which is a key skill to develop as otherwise
you’ll be walking up the beach at some point.
Stoked for today's lesson:
On one of my runs, I felt like Mother Nature was challenging
me. I was riding away from the beach and
all of a sudden a curious sea lion popped up about 20 feet way. That was cool but he threw off my concentration
and soon after I wiped out…then I felt my right leg wrapped around what felt
like a wet blanket. I knew right away
what it was and quickly tried to move my leg away…it was a huge jellyfish. That’s going to hurt. I wanted to relaunch the kite but then I saw
another big jellyfish and I was heading straight for it so I overpowered the
kite in slight panic and did a bit of a “Jesus walk”. Thankfully it wasn’t too hard to retrieve my
board and it did improve my confidence with that skill as the day before I
couldn’t get back to my board and I had to bodysurf into the beach. Jorge went and retrieved it.
Didn't quite pull off this transition...and none of my good ones were filmed. :(
I kind of wished I had one more day to do another lesson,
although my body was actually pretty happy to be done. My stomach, back and shoulder muscles were
ready for a break. I feel like I’m at
the point that I could practice with minimal supervision and hone my
skills. I was definitely happy to have
come back for a few more lessons.
Me and Jorge:
In the back on the left is Jose Luiz and another instructor Andres:
Thanks Jorge and Jose Luiz!
