6 minute read
Cape Town - The Dark Side
Many of us have kited in Cape Town’s endless summer – consistent winds, dependable waves, beautiful scenery, delicious food – there’s a long list of reasons that draw Europeans there to escape the Northern Hemisphere winter. But local resident and GKA competitor Aron Rosslee and friends want to show us the other side so have spent the last few months filming a video to entice us over there in their winter. Just make sure you take your raincoat...
WORDS ARON ROSSLEE PHOTOS NICHOLAS SPILSBURY AND DYLAN OSBORNE
Growing up in Cape Town has taught me a thing or two that outsiders might never understand fully – being able to read the forecasts correctly and figuring out where the best conditions will be. In summer it’s easy – wake up, look at the mountain, wait for the tablecloth to come down, give it twenty minutes and then head to your closest beach for a session. The only stressful part about this is finding a parking spot, as in summer it’s like bumper karts in the car parks.
But after the summer you get our winters, which dish up the complete opposite to our summer sessions…
Cape Town’s winter has always been a tricky one when it comes to kiting. Things slow right down. We don’t get wind every day, and when it does come, you really have to make the right call when reading the conditions, and time your sessions right. With its unpredictable winds and stormy weather, it is hard to have the perfect session. We’ve had days when we thought the forecast looked promising at a particular spot. We would drive two hours to get there expecting conditions to be insane, only to pull up to hardly any wind, and rain bucketing down, and we would then struggle to get going in the big swell and rain hitting our faces. Not to mention the hardship of getting out of your toasty warm car to the icy winds and gnarly swells. So, when the wind does come through, we have to make the most of it, and when it all lines up it’s perfect, and the sessions we do have are so much more rewarding.
The van we use for our winter missions has been in my family for a few years and is the vehicle that we throw all our gear into, from kiting equipment to my dad’s motorbikes – it’s a pure adventure machine. When my dad handed it down to me, the idea came to me to convert it for long journeys to find new and different spots, sleeping in the van and working remotely if needed. We started building, stripping the van inside to then be rebuilt from the ground up. At the same time, we cooked up a video project to show the true beauty of winter in Cape Town. All people know of it is that it’s cold and stormy, and we wanted to change that perception. We went into this journey with high hopes, minds filled with creativity and vision, and bodies filled with energy to get out there in the elements and capture the beauty of winter. We thought we were on to something new and exciting to bring to the kiting world. All three of us have Cape Town as our back yard but we hadn’t explored it fully until now. We didn’t know what we were in for – we thought maybe a little bit of rain here and there, but we were wrong.
This was my first time converting a van to travel and sleep in, to be at the right spot at the right time. It was a great experience driving around new and remote spots in Cape Town that no one has captured before. The ability to go to a faraway spot and not mind being skunked by the weather, because we could sleep in the van and wait for better conditions, helped us a lot – we didn’t need to drive all the way back
the next day for only a 50/50 chance of a good session. This made the journey so much more worth it and memorable. There was one day when we had the conditions we needed, got the shots and all had smiles from ear to ear. Packing up and sitting around the campfire with your friends having a good time and reminiscing about the day is what it’s all about.
At the start of the project we traveled all the way up our west coast then around to the dark side of Table Mountain. I personally saw a new side to Cape Town that I haven’t seen before, and it just shows what new things you can discover when you venture out of your comfort zone. But then, from the beginning of March, we were faced with the Covid-19 lockdown. This made the whole journey really complicated as we couldn’t film, and more importantly the beaches were closed and all watersports were banned. Getting around these challenges was next to impossible, with a high chance of getting arrested if we were seen in the water. After a few calls we were able to get around the politics and obtained special permission to get out there and film. Even then we still faced a few challenges with roads closed and not being able to get to the right spot, but nevertheless we overcame it and got what we aimed for.
One adventure of making the video was the rail section. We thought we were going to rock up at the beach, set up the rail with ease and get riding straight away. Oh, were we wrong! It took two hours just to set it up, because it was beyond heavy and with only three guys it was such a struggle. But finally we could spend the rest of the afternoon hitting the rail and having an experience I never thought I would have in Cape Town as there isn’t a huge park scene here. Surrounded by mountains and the odd rainbow, you could say the session was perfect. But then we still had to pack up… After such a session you can imagine how exhausted we were and the two hours of setting up turned into three hours packing away, carrying the heavy metal rail through the water well past sunset, tired and starting to get cold. We ended the day with a hot meal and reviewing the day’s footage which luckily was well worth it.
This journey has been a complete joyride for us, and despite some downsides, it was 100% worth it. I’m so used to traveling around the world to find the next adventure, and until now I never thought that I could find it in my backyard. I am so stoked that I had two of my close mates on this project with me and even more stoked to share it with the world. ■
