By: Rou Chater, Editor at iKsurfmag
Mitu gets to grips with the OB conditions…
I’m lucky enough to be accompanying Mitu Monteiro on a trip to Baja, Mexico with the crew from Bay Area Kitesurf who are based in San Francisco. We’re off to Baja tomorrow and will be out of radio contact for a while in terms of serious upload speeds, so we figured a quick teaser would be in order, before we kiss the Internet goodbye! Nico Ostermann is hosting us at his awesome house here before we all fly south, he kindly took us on a tour of the city and to some of the kite spots. We didn’t have much time and headed to the local spot of Ocean Beach to sample some of the typical Pacific Ocean conditions the place delivers!
Nico and Mitu checking out the beach!
We chatted to a few of the locals in the car park and Mitu rigged up his 8m and a new prototype pro model that looked pretty tasty, we can’t say too much about it for obvious reasons but expect big things in 2015! Sadly I’m suffering a busted foot at the moment so I cunningly used that as an excuse (not the cold) to be the cameraman, rather than get wet…
One of the new Manera suits in a rather stylish blue…
The wind was pumping and whilst the swell wasn’t up to much there were plenty of lumps to play about on. The locals were treated to a true “show” from Mitu as he did some huge strapless tricks with the board stuck firmly to his feet like glue! It always amazes me how he manages to land nearly every trick he pulls, even when a gust of wind looks to make it go wrong his cat like agility and athleticism seem to pull the landing out of the bag!
That board is nailed on I reckon!
In addition to lots of strapless jiggery pokery, Mitu made short work of the waves that were rolling in, getting critical and finding faces wherever he could he seemed to be relishing the fun conditions. It was the first time for both of us at Ocean Beach and it certainly looked like everyone was having a blast on the water to me. The local crew seemed to be smashing the place up too, with about around 20 kites on the water up and down the beach there were more than a few people taking a cheeky Friday afternoon off work!
Chucking buckets at the northern end of the beach…
After a couple of hours of shredding it was time to head back home and pack the board bags ready for the trip tomorrow. We’re all pretty excited to say the least, it’s not somewhere Mitu or I have been before, we’ll be doing a full article on Baja in Issue 45 which is due out in June, so keep your eyes peeled for that. It was great to meet the friendly locals down at Ocean Beach today, thanks for having us and perhaps see you next time we are over here!
Mitu getting critical on one of the larger lumps…
Busting the tail out…
Punting one near the beach!