Three weeks ago, while filming in Brazil, Mallory Hersart de la Villemarqué, called me on skypean afternoon and told me that he had found a good deal to go to Cape Verde and surf Punta Preta.

The problem was that the departure was only 2 days after I would be back from Brazil and I had several things to do, but the idea of  a trip to Cape Verde and the mytic wave of Punta Pretta was to good to ignore. So, in 10 min, after a quick call to Ocean Rodeo, we booked our flights and were ready for our first real trip together. 

Manu Morel, very talented kite photographer would be part of our trip. I was really exited as I had already met Manu in St Marteen several years ago, and I always been  impressed by his work in all the kite magazines worldwide.

Two weeks later we were on our way to Sal island, famous for it's amazing wave conditions at Punta Preta. Mallory and I flew from Nice where he is now studying, and Manu came from Montpelier.

Thanks to Fun and Fly who arranged our stay on the island, we arrived at the Morabeza hotel which welcomed us right of the airport. We had a super nice room well located close to a nice  Surf spot, a kite spot, thecenter of santa Maria ( the town) and punta preta where we can see the brakes from the road ! The perfect location for us. You can go out at night,  surf and kite the same day.

The first day of our trip, we met Mitu Monteiro, wave KPWT world champion last season, he lives there and knows all the best kite and surf spots, he would be our guide for this nice trip.

After renting a 4 wheel drive  to load all our gear, we first went to surf punta preta as the wind wasn't very strong. The right brake is amazing, I 'm not so use to surf rights, but this was a perfect opportunity for me to train  and surf backside.

The next days the wind was pretty consistent, and using the same board, strapless, we went out me on my 8 m ocean rodeo and Mallory on his 7. This is when Mitu did the show on the water and showed us what strapless kite surfing means. He was ripping the wave, getting in all barrels etc .... a very impressive rider !

We had a lot of fun  the next days, kiting this amazing wave, and scoring some pretty good wipe out.

The next days, to show the full potential of Sal island, we went to explore some freestyle spots and had some pretty good sessions in kitebeach ( the main freestyle kite spot) offering a lot of nice kickers. But the main surprise came from puntalema, a long rock strip offering the perfect flat water spot with sometime nice kickers coming in. It was to tempting not to use my bindings and we went out for a really nice freestyle session.

The next days the wind went down a little so we decided to explore other islands around Sal, so we flew down to SaoVicente , the whole team together, Mallory, Mitu, manu, me and Alex Caizergues and his girl friend Marie .

We had a lot of fun trying to  discover some new waves on the north shore and score a couple nice surf session.

I'm now back in the south of France for few days, I finally got my laptop back from warranty, so I'll be able to sort out all the pictures and videos from this trip.

Thanks to Manu Morel for the amazing pictures and the filming.

Have a look at the web selection of the pictures before to find the exclusive shots on your favourite magazines.

Jeremie Tronet