Action Sports in Maui
One of Maui the Hawaii island tourist attractions is the sport of kiteboarding. There are many schools in Maui that offer visitors unique opportunities to learn the sport. So what is kiteboarding?
Kitesurfing is a water sport involving wind power that pulls a rider on top of the water with a surfboard or a kiteboard, which is like a wakeboard. Kiteboarding usually refers to the riding styles of freestyle or wakestyle. But kitesurfing is more about wave-riding. Both styles typically entail different boards and performance kites specific to the style. Often you can rent these boards if you buy Maui vacation packages.
Kitesurfers employ boards that sometimes come with or without foot-straps or bindings. They also need a large kite that is controllable but powerful and allows them to propel the board over the water.
Safety has become a bigger part of the sport recently. New improvements in the design of kites, instruction, and the safety release systems have aided kitesurfers in developing their riding styles, including wakestyle, jumping, freestyle, and others.
Freestyle allows kitesurfers to choose from different jumps, twists, and spins. It is also the most popular kind of style amoung kitesurfers with lots of experience. Many competitions typically host freestyle events.
There are also other styles. Big air, whish is also called hangtime, employs the kite power to get as much time in the air. Currently, the most time ever held by a kitesurfer is 13 seconds. Speed surfing is another style. The speed style means going in a straight line and as fast as you can. 40 knots is the current top record for speed style kitesurfing.
Before anyone should consider taking up kitesurfing, they should consider hiring a professional instructor since the power the kites in kitesurfing provides is extreme. Many schools and training programs are offered across the world now as the sport has increased in popularity. Check out a local kitesurfing association in your area to find an accredited instructor to help get you started. One of the reason’s Maui Travel is so popular is that it offers many opportunities for kitesurfing.
Johannesburg Sports
We were advised at any number of Johannesburg boutique hotels that the car is king and that it will be difficult if not impossible to find a cab in this laid out city and, furthermore, the people are very punctual. I don’t why that last bit was thrown in but it is good to know and Inoddled appreciatively at the man. But we were hungry and thirsty and asked where we could get a pint and a little lunch or a lot of lunch. He gave us directions that seemedpunctuated in a kind of waggling sign language that seemed incomprehensible in the lobby, but Toni and I found out were spot on once we were outside and in the South African day of blue skies and light clouds.
We popped into the pub and ordered pints and overheard gentlemen boasting about the upcoming World Cup that South Africa will host which is all anyone there wanted to talk about, if it wasn’t talk about rugby or, gulp, cricket, of which I know less than anything about and after much study of the video monitors in the wood lined pub with its brass rails and thick glass I couldn’t decipher. One fellow who seemed to have a bowler hat on the rail beneath him and an umbrella that looked like it could have been present during the Blitz of London. I tried to tell them how in some ways the game looked like American football, a purer and less regimented form of the tackling artful game weAmericans know and love, well some of us anyway, and they wouldn’t have it. “Tut tut, old fellow!” the guy with the bowler hat said between intakes of his dark ale. “You won’t see thatabominable sport here!” and I must profess I kind of got into the rugby game on the tube. Now if they would only do the wave.
| Posted in Sports, Travel | No Comments »
| Posted in Sports, Travel | No Comments »