BEHIND THE SCENES - CEARA SESSIONS
Ever wonder how the brands come up with those silky smooth edits that you flip through in a couple of minutes and that put a bit of a smile on your face? Think it’s a coupe of afternoons down the beach and job done. Think again. Dylan van der Meij takes us through the making of Ceara Sessions with the Flysurfer team.
Photos Nick de Bruijn
(This feature originally appeared in the September – October 2013 Kitesurf Magazine. To read more features like this first, Print and Digital subscriptions are available. Prices include delivery globally for 7 x issues a year!)
Sun, wind and flat water. As most kitesurfers know: Brazil got it all. Brazil has been a really popular kitesurfing destination for the past few years and the great kite conditions and the relaxed atmosphere keeps kitesurfers coming back year after year. I’ve heard so many positive stories about Brazil, so I knew this trip was going to be a good one!
The first two weeks in Cumbuco were great. I had some great training sessions with the other dutchies on the Cauipe and Tabuba lagoon. There was a big group of Dutch people, the level from most of the guys and girls is pretty high, and many of them had collected some titles in kitesurfing over the last couple of years. Jerrie van de Kop and I stayed in the same pousada close to the village centre of Cumbuco. Jerrie won the European junior champions two times in a row. Other dutchies included Annelous Lammerts and Nanette van der Snoek. Annelous won the European kitesurf tour in 2012 and Nanette van der Snoek won the Kite Tour Asia in the beginning of the same year.
I had two weeks training there and I learned some new tricks and was more consistent on the tricks I could do. Near Cumbuco there are two lagoons. Cauipe is the lagoon were most people go, from Cumbuco you can make a nice downwinder to Cauipe and come back with the buggy which cost you about 13 Euros. You can squeeze in 4 to 5 people in a buggy and the prices stays the same. At Cauipe there is a place where you can get drinks and food. This place also sells cool coconuts, you can drink the coconut water straight out of the coconut for 3 Reals (1 euro) and near the lagoon you can chill in the shadows from the bucana’s. A bucana is basically a square roof made from four sticks with palm leafs on it and there are tables and chairs which you can use. Once you’re settled on a chair in the shade you have a front row seat for the kite action. A lot of good kiters from all over the world come to the lagoon to train, but also the local rip! Guys like Eudazio da Silva and Carlos Madson who also compete in the PKRA live in or near Cumbuco.
The other lagoon is called Tabuba and is located upwind from Cumbuco. You can easily get there by public transport. Most of the busses from Cumbuco go to Tabuba – just ask the driver and drop your kite gear in the bus. Once you see the lagoon on your left hand side you simply pull the rope to create a stop sound or yell to the driver and from this point you have to walk to the other side of the lagoon to launch your kite. On this side of the lagoon there are no facilities so you should bring some water and food yourself. When you are done kiting you just walk 50 meters to the ocean and downwind back to Cumbuco.
Both of the lagoons are really crowded with Brazilians on Sunday. They swim in the lagoons and chill on the beach and some of them arrive with 4x4s with loud Brazilian music on. If you are fed up with the crowded lagoons you can always go for a session on the sea. You can kite in front of the whole coast, but the best place is Durobeach. This beach is located a little bit upwind from the centre of Cumbuco. With low tide there are some really nice kicker waves with flat water in between.
Work commitments
The time flew by and my Brazil trip was already halfway through. Now it was time to shoot! Photo and videographer Nick de Bruijn came over from Holland and together we were going to shoot the action video for Flysurfer, Ceara Sessions. Flysurfer have been supporting me for the past three years and I’m really happy with their support. It is great to be part of a team with super motivated and friendly people who are developing different kites then most of the brands. Flysurfer is known for their foils kites who can get you on the water with a really light breeze. Also, the kites have a huge amount of hangtime and lift, this makes the kite so much fun to ride in stormy conditions as well.
During the day the lagoons were crowded and the sunlight wasn’t ideal for filming, so Nick and I usually did an early morning and an afternoon session. Some of the morning sessions didn’t worked out as we hoped, the wind usually gets steady and turns in the right direction later in the morning. But some mornings we were lucky and the wind and the sunlight were from the right angle. Luckily most kite tourist didn’t go kiting in the early morning and we had some great sessions on an empty lagoon. If we went to the Tabuba lagoon we finished shooting around 1 or 2, the sunlight was burning, and there was no place to relax near the lagoon so we went back to our pousada to eat, drink and to relax a bit. In the afternoon we would then do another session on one of the lagoons and get some more footage.
If we went to the Cauipe lagoon we stayed there the whole day and, during the warmest period of the day, we relaxed in the shadow and enjoyed the kite action. In the afternoon we went filming again. After a day of kiting we were really hungry – thankfully in the centre you have a proper meal for a couple of Euros or you can get some pasta or rice from the super market and prepare it yourself.
For the video we also needed some lifestyle and nature shots and for this part of the video we went filming in the centre of Cumbuco and on the dunes right behind our Pousada. The people in Cumbuco are super friendly. They were all willing to help us out with the shots and enjoyed it. Just behind our pousada and the village centre there are some big sandy dunes. Buggies make trips with the tourist trough the dunes, and Nick and I walked up the dunes with the camera gear to get some shots of the nice surroundings and views – and the sandy dunes were pretty nice to do some flips in too!
After launching the video we got many positive comments and a lot of views. Nick and I were super-happy with the result and we had a great trip. We met some great people and had good sessions in the sunny Brazil. Check out the video on the Vimeo account
of Flysurfer: Ceara sessions.
“ The people in Cumbuco are super friendly. They were all willing to help us out with the shots and enjoyed it ”