PKRA Panama Nitro City.

My trip to Panama wasn't scheduled for this year, while training in Tarifa at the beginning of the year I found out that heading to Panama could be a great way to start the year and also to turn on the competition mode. So I went there from Barcelona four days before the competition to check out the spot and the conditions and start training there. Unfortunately my bags arrived two days later than I expected luckily our team at Bestkiteboarding is really friendly and cool and Helena borrowed me her gear for two days. :) ! The spot in Panama was pretty awesome the competition was held in a place called Nitro City which is an extreme sports resort were you can do whatever you want. There is a cable park which was pretty fun to hit every day. You can also head to a lagoon a few km down with flat water and do lots of other things...

The first day of competition was supposed to be a windy one so they scheduled the first Skipper Meeting at 7 am. We were all ready with our kites ready to compete for the spots at the main event but the wind wasn't really there... With solid 10kts we had to wait a few hours to start with the trials. I had my first heat against Antonie Fermon who was a big opponent, the wind showed up and we started competing, I went out in my heat on my 13m GP the wind was pretty good and I did one of my best heats ever, unfortunately it wasn't enough to beat him so I had to go for another heat later.

My next heat was looking pretty okay for me the conditions were light but enough to do tricks and it was favorable for me because I was the smallest one. I was against Alex Soto and Olivier Umpierre, the wind was still light for 13m and it dropped even more during the heat we were all underpowered on our biggest kites. In the end I lost by a really close judging decision against Upierre with a 3/2 up to him.

I was so sad with myself because I couldn't manage to do powered tricks on those light conditions but loosing isn't bad at all it motivates you to go bigger on the next events.
I spend my last days in Panama kiting around and enjoying the 2.0 cable system at the hotel. I also learned a lot from the judges staying at the tower and checking the tricks and the scores.