Explore europe in a campervan

Although we had collected the now-repaired Flysurfer kite, the weather was not in our favour so we retreated to a campsite to do all the chores that had been building up – toilet-emptying, water-getting, battery-charging and some internet time! We used a different campsite this time – Rio Jara – they charged us €22 which is the low season price. Not the cheapest we’ve used but they had free internet. Most of the Spanish campsites with wifi charge you to use it – around €10 per day! We had a really good catch up with family and friends online, updated the blog and our photos and even watched Sky news. Definitely the best way to spend the day when it just won’t stop raining.

The following day the sky was clear and much more promising so we went into Tarifa town to hire a kitesurf board again, then hit the beach at Valdevaqueros. The wind usually picks up from 1 or 2pm and the beach was filling up around that time – moreso than usual being the weekend. There was still enough clear space that we felt we weren’t putting anyone else in danger so we got the kite out. Unfortunately there just wasn’t sufficient wind. It was hard to believe because it felt quite fresh, but the kite just wouldn’t stay in the sky. It kept over-flying Simon’s head, then losing power and folding up. After persevering for some time and relaunching several times on the water and on the beach Simon was losing the battle. Looking up and down the beach there were lots of kites sitting on the sand, but very few on the water – an indication that the wind is too light. We gave up and sunbathed instead. Poor us.

That night we bumped and shook our way into the big field just up the road from the beach car park. We would have stayed there all week except for the terrain and the weather. It’s a rough field and in wet conditions would be virtually impassable so we didn’t want to get stuck. The van rocked and rolled and you definitely wouldn’t want to be driving in and out every day. There are lots of different vans, trucks and motorhomes parked there – some clearly staying long-term – and there’s an ice cream kiosk near to the road selling everything from bread and water to beer and tomato ketchup! It’s reassuring to see they’re catering for people staying-put for several days or longer and definitely somewhere we’ll park up when we return to Tarifa.

Sunday was much more successful for wind and, despite frustrations with the kite’s performance, Simon persevered and managed a couple of really good runs standing up on the board. Still, the kite was very difficult to manage. It’s really hard to sit yourself in the water, put your feet into the bindings of the board and keep a misbehaving kite under control at the same time. The Flysurfer Psycho is not a recently-developed kite and it’s become apparent that it just isn’t as stable as the inflatable bow-kites that most kite-surfers are using. We’ve started looking at second-hand kites as well as boards and will trawl the many shops when we return to Tarifa.

I should mention that I finally got my little (3.5 square metre) kite out for a fly on the beach. With the strong winds and my little incident with the 9 metre Flysurfer kite I was feeling more apprehensive than usual. But flying my Flexifoil Rage reassured me that kiting is fun – when you have the power under control – and I’m looking forward to land-boarding again as soon as possible.

So that’s it for our first stop in Tarifa. We came, we parked, we flew and we crashed!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.