End of a 4,000 km kite trip

My quarter of a year in Brazil is coming to an end. It was the strangest of all my journeys. In contrast to holidays, travelling means finding a home away from home. When I travelled, I often felt at home quickly in many places. Brazil was different. I could say that the wind simply blew me away too quickly. But that was only ever true on the water. On land, I spent longer in each place than on any of my other journeys.

Nevertheless, I felt at home in very few places. Perhaps even the Ballermann often has fewer Germans. Maybe kiters no longer really have a common spirt. Maybe my passion fruit and caipi love affair was too intense. Maybe the internet was almost always too bad to work. Maybe I just couldn’t open my eyes wide enough after a tough year.

I learnt a new language. For the first time in many years, I visited a country where I could initially only communicate with my hands and feet. The learning was hard and rewarding. No knowledge is more valuable than immersing yourself in a language.

I sought the wind. Nothing is easier than finding the wind on the north coast of Brazil. It blows always and everywhere. Further big tasks were missing. No hiking. No swimming. No cycling. Just kiting. Almost every day. Until you shout “ouch” in the evening because you stepped on another hand on the way home from the last spot.

On average, I drank a litre of sugar water every day, ate well and partied a lot. But even that wasn’t enough to replace the calories I burned. I’m not one of those fetishists who shove a GPS tracker up their bum and then watch a GoPro video in the evening to track their own inability in real time on an interactive Google map. So the only thing left to do is the maths: 77 days of 2.5 hours of kiting at a low average speed of 20 km/h. That makes just under 4,000 kilometres kited and around 15,000 jumps. Could also have been 50%. Yesterday I was still saying something like “Wow, 400 km downwinder would be way too far for me”. Today I’m sitting in front of the computer, surprised, proud and exhausted.

My two crossbows have withstood everything, only one depower rope broke. The only damage to my board was due to misuse as a roof rack on 170 kilometres with the beach buggy. The harness died on the very last ride. I didn’t have a single really bad fall, just a few medium ones with “air way” and “ribs ouch”. My knee is pale from the splint and still pretty much a goner. My back has been signalling an impending lumbago for weeks, but the body tension is probably still too high for that. The tennis arms are manageable.

The journey was rarely easy, often a challenge and always rewarding. I would like to thank all the lovely people who made the trip so special for me and I am looking forward to my new old home and the good friends there.

What was there? Everything that is valuable.
What remains? Everything I remember.
What will be? Everything that is new.