Last year, together with my caribbean mate Jeremie Tronet we decided to go and meet for first time Mitu Monteiro and to learn from his waveriding skills in Cape Verde!!  It was fun to discover his island together with Jerem and professional photographer Manu Morel. I had the sudden need to discover a new exciting place by the end of January and thought about the perfect waves of Punta Preta, where we could surf and try to improve our waveriding… Mitu showed us his “secret” and not so secret spots and we enjoyed these 2 weeks of stay. Seeing him riding in the waves so easily and nicely was despairing me sometime, but also a good motivation to improve… there is a lot to do!

Jeremie came out with this funny and nice video, it was not the original purpouse of the trip but he managed to make a little piece of art once again, so big up to him!

I definitely recommend Cape Verde from October to March for the people who like to freestyle, waveriding and surfing everyday!!! here why I loved the place:

Strait after Gwada I came back home in Cannes and Jeremie Tronet happened to be around for family holidays. Just like last year in Cape Verde, we decided within a few hours to start a new trip together and have some fun.

This time it was a quite different location tho, a little road trip to the mountains in order to show Jerem’ how cold the snow can get… He had never snowboarded before and it was the opportunity to make a funny story out of it… We both are coming from French Caribbean islands (Martinique and Guadeloupe) and we were not quite in our elements at the mountains and living some -12ºC in Switzerland. It might sound ridiculous but when coming a few days before from +28ºC and getting into that fridge can be very hard.

The trip started in GAP, France, where we visited some friends of mine. We then headed to Geneva for a few days, where my friend Goody had invited us to come and ride their snowkite spots. Doing our first New Year party at a ski station was pretty nice, different from what we are used to but the spirit of the mountain is as nice as at the beach. The Swiss team that welcomed us was very friendly and we definitely enjoyed our stay in the Chalet and seeing the village covered with snow.
During our stay there, we probably had one of the most exhausting day of exercise. The plan was to climb for 45 min with our snowkite gear and all the cameras on our back, then rig the kites and go up the mountains all the way to the spot. It sounded amazing and would probably have been the most amazing snowkite day, except that the wind did not quite show up… Therefore we made the 45min be 1h15, then 1h45, 2h and probably more than 2h30… could not do more as we almost made it to the top. The way up there was particularly hard because we had to carry around 30kg of material in order to shoot Jeremie’s first snowkite session ever, but it did not really happen as the light was gone and the wind was very light.
Despite all this, the experience of being up the mountain with powder snow and enjoying the stunning view with friends was still amazing, so we anyway enjoyed the day and a nice “Raclette” for dinner was waiting for us!!!

The rest of the trip was much of the same, traveling around and trying new spots, discovering frozen lakes, snow, snow and more snow, and realizing that Caribbeans are not made for living in a cold place!!

We had a funny snowboard session back in Nice and Jeremie is improving a little at least . The weather here is amazing, about 23ºC at the sun… not the right temperature for snow but still enjoyable for mid january and we took advantage to go climbing a little…
We will be shooting some more snowkite action when the wind finally comes, and then our epic movie should be editable by mister Jerem’ the artist.

Here a few pics of the action, behind the scene and some fun… they talk by themselves and we are still working very very hard on our style!!! Killing it!

When the wind is not blowing there are other alternatives to keep enjoying the ocean and get some adrenaline… Stand Up Paddle is one of the best water sports and I love it so much because of it’s polyvalence… You can cruise around when there are no waves nor wind, surfing the smallest wave can become very funny and charging big waves is even better.

While on my Christmas trip to Guadeloupe (Gwada), I had the chance to get some really good swells for SUPing. Actually the best session I ever had. Probably not the first time I say that, and not the last, but being alone on my paddle at 8am with perfect waves coming in just for myself to enjoy for hours, offshore wind and 28ºC air and 26ºC when you crash,  can easily be resumed to the best session ever. I obviously would have loved to share the waves with some friends but this time it was just for myself. A Christmas gift  worth 10 years of gifts that not even millions can pay for…

Here a little video I have done for fun, and a few low rez pictures.

This is a video of the last months riding here in Southeast of France… just wanted to show the perfection of the spot l’Almanarre!! It is to me the best spot I’ve been riding in when the conditions are on your side… it looks like a huge swimming pool, with kilometers of perfectly flat water and offshore winds, any depth you wish and you can easily be by yourself… Even wanting to build a kitespot like that you could not make it that good!!!
Plus the spot is very often windy, almost like Tarifa, but the other direction of wind is kind of much harder. But it’s good to train in all conditions…
There’s also a bit of riding in Cannes, my homespot, which can get very good too and you get to see huge luxury boats sometimes, not bat neither, just to entertain your session!

Cheers!!

Here a few cool videos from comps and riding…

A great video of the KTA in Turkey which was a cool comp:

and a bit of cablepark 2.0 which I’m still learning to do… The vid is from our french team COR and was edited by Thomas Paris during the french champ in Canet en Roussillon: