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Brazil Brazil had to be my first stop for winter training. I’d heard so much about the perfect, warm lagoon conditions with wave spots as far as you can see. I knew this was the ideal place to get stuck into learning new tricks and seriously take a beating! So I packed my kit, luckily managed to squeeze my 5’2 Jimmy wave board in which I was totally happy about, and set of off with a few guys from the Turbulence and Flexifoil team. We flew into Fortaleza and then based ourselves in the Sunset Beach Hotel just down the beach from the town of Cumbuco. We could see the crowds of kites up by the town and had all the room in the world to play in the waves outside the hotel with never more than five kites in the area. Here, I swapped between practicing freestyle on my ‘Sister’ twin tip and riding the 5’2 wave board. The waves were a nice little size to practise riding strapless and then really cranked up on super high tides to a big scary shore dump! Nice! On many of these occasions there was a queue of guys waiting to steel my wave board so I was often banished back to my twin tip! A short buggy ride down the beach was the Caipi lagoon. There is a small stretch of sand cutting it off from the sea and it is butter flat. At mid day it was getting pretty busy but early or later on you had all the room you could dream of! I learnt a lot here as it was perfect for pushing me to do tricks on my bad side. I also did a couple of trips to other spots. A group of us rented some trucks and headed north as far as Jericacoa. This is an amazing little hippy town, which suits me down to the ground! The wind was howling cross off shore and there were perfect little two foot kickers. We had some amazing sunset sessions here in front of the giant sand dune which the whole town climbs at 5.30pm every day. Learning new tricks in a place like this makes it even better! We found numerous other lagoons. One just north of Jeri, where we took a crazy truck drive to across a river on a raft and up giant sand dunes, was super windy and I had an epic 5m session. We found other lagoons on the drive back which were perfect training grounds. Each one brings back a fab memory of learning something new! So much easier to learn in these conditions than with the ice cream headaches and thick neoprene cladding I have been induced to since returning to North Wales! My next training destination is Margarita and Coche Islands, Venezuela, in February. Here I will master many more tricks and polish up the ones learnt in Brazil. Enjoy your sessions and I will keep you posted on my progress - Johara xxx |
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