Australia - Brisbane

Next one up after Sydney was Brisbane. The main reason to go there was to meet my good old friend Kate. Finally i made it to Australia, so i had to fulfill my promise and visit her over here.
She's living couple of minutes out of town in a suburb called Taringa, the roads out there are a bit like riding a roller coaster...up n down hill.

The main transport around town is either bus, train or boat, last one is very nice on a sunny day, to cruise along the river all the way through town. I did some cultural day wt a visit to an art exhibit in the old power station, they showed a selection of the price winning photos from 2011 awards.

I spent some good time wt Kate, we had some lunch at her Uni, the Queensland University which is a very big university where u can easily get lost.
The nightlife and bars of Brisbane are good and i think u can find something for every taste. We had a dinner at a Tibetan restaurant, which was delicious. Lots of new flavors that i haven't tasted before.
The nights out in OZ a not very cheap, a bottle of beer can easy cost 8$ in any kind of bar and in shops it is still 2-3$ for a bottle.. but hey they have good wine, which i like too :-)

So from here on i was supposed to head up to Townsville for an event, which was actually the whole reason why i came to OZ, but sadly the local organizer told us in the last minute that we have to pay now to run his event due to him not being able to secure a sponsor, so this would be kinda u come to work for me and then pay me to watch u working... This leaving us no other choice than to drop the comp ,which in the end had no wind anyways... karma...
So instead of that i took the chance and went over to the cook islands a bit earlier than planned
.. and that's gonna be my next blog :-)

big hug and thank u to Kate and her house mate Tim to let me occupy the couch for a while... next time we meet in Europe...

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Australia - Sydney

So after China i took a long flight over to the other hemisphere, to Sydney in Australia.
Just when we left China i found out that Alice lives in Sydney and she offered me to stay wt her. So after the early morning arrival i ended up in a suburb of Sydney, about 30minutes train ride outside of the center at a station called Como. The area looks a bit like Switzerland, except the the lake view is a sea view... and ur aloud to kite on it...

 

So as it also happend to be, there was another friend in town as well. So i met up wt Rikki in town and we had a couple of good walks... even though i think she didn't like the long walks in uncomfy shoes... hehee

We went to explore the Opera house and the Darling Harbour and over to Manly beach.. which we just reached after nightfall, so there was not too much to see anymore, but a nice place anyway.

I spent the next couple days bumming around town and at the kite beaches in the area, Kurnell and Cronulla beach just south of the airport. Alice showed me all those great spots wt her fun car, a very old model of a Holden car. The only thing stoped me from kiting around here was the cold... it's winter down under.

After exploring the Sydney nightlife and a short visit to Bondi beach (at night) i had one more thing to do, go see a kangaroo... since there is a small zoo in the middle of the Sydney that was our place to go. There is a bunch of small critters and scary big animals to see and the Koalas and Kangaroos.

 The last thing i explored was Vivid Sydney, this is an amazing gathering of art and light installation around the Opera house. Plenty of interactive and very colorful installations make this exhibit a very unique kind.If u got the chance, it will be again in 2013...

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KTA China

It's been a while since my last post and also a few miles and hours of flight in between.

After my last kite adventure in Sri Lanka i went of to the KTA China tour stop. We set up camp in a new location there, called Pingtan Island, next bigger city is Fuzhou. The wind here is nuking, most of the houses around the city have big rocks on the roof to keep it in place, 50knots is nothing unusual here.

We were lucky and got some good winds, we did the full freestyle doubles and some TT and RB races.
The crowd was crazy, it was not the usual couple hundreds it was more like couple of thousands that spread along the beach. The whole city got a day of from the government to come to the beach and check out the competition. The KTA videos were running on a massive, Broadway size screen in the middle of the city for the last month, so everyone knew what was goin on on the beach that weekend.

We also had a record of participants in the TT class, which will hopefully be soon included in the official rankings of IKA and ISAF since this is the biggest fleet at every event.

It was a very good event, wt a ginormous beach setup and a very good hotel. A small spontaneous mid week balcony room party... which ended up wt some snow like feathers flying all over... ;-)
All the riders got free accommodation and free food every day. We had great food and some cute little chines students to translate for us, these angels are very helpful if u don't speak a word of chines.

The final party was not as crazy as others but still good.

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