One week in La Ventana
Girmantas | Travel | January 20, 2011
Spotas readers already know a lot about La Ventana. But what can you do here during one-week regular holidays? Spotas friend Marius came to Baja last Tuesday. Those who’ve watched “Tarifa” or “Čilė” already know him as an actor. This time he came over, in his own words, “until it’s going to become boring or he will run out of money”.
We had a surprise ready for us on the very first morning. One dolphin came right in front of Ventana Bay Resort. Even though El Norte created some wind swell and paddling wasn’t very easy, we took a couple of SUP boards and paddled out to catch the dolphin. Marius was the only one lucky not only to reach it, but to pet it as well. Later we paddled back to the resort and surfed some nice chest-high waves peeling on the reef right in front of it. Since the wind was light, we went out to see the surrounding area and check the swell in the secret spot.
But La Ventana is famous for its wind. And what sort of Lithuanian (or any other North-European citizen) will hesitate to sail? Marius rigged 5.3 SuperStyle sail with 74 RRD WaveTwin board and splashed a little spray here and there. One of us made a joke during our lunch, that we should go for the island today. Soon a joke became a plan and we took of for 10 mile channel crossing. Wind was a bit light on the way to the island, but once we’ve reached its shore – we both were totally overpowered! The direction was excelent for crossing back to La Ventana. We set our course slightly downwind. Blasting at full speed we made it back within half an hour.
Here there’s always something going on when the sun goes down and moonlight shadow keeps following you wherever you go. This time we went south. There where the desert meets the sea and pyrotechnic maniacs hold their annual “Burning Bush” festival. All sorts of sculptures, torches, bonfires, even burning sand, fire spitting quads and wave projections in the nature reminded us our very first Surf Camp in Lithuania. After we drank some booze we came back to our place. And we’ve already had a plan for the next morning.
It’s still winter here in Baja and waking up early in the morning is a challenge. It’s pretty cool before the sun comes up and you don’t put a sweater for surfing session. Anyway, we’ve managed to hit the water on SUP before the sun came up. Paddling alone in the ocean we’ve greeted the sun and enjoyed it’s warm rays of light, that lit up silhouettes of another rays – manta rays swimming under our boards. As Marius was saying on the way back: “It’s so good to know that I don’t need to leave after two weeks”.
We did have a lot of activities in one week in La Ventana – surfing, paddling, kitesurfing, windsurfing, island crossing, mountain biking, not to forget the festival and, of course, great Mexican cuisine. We even had to skip kayaking and fishing trip intentionally. There was not enough time to do everything. The first week is over, but tomorrow the international La Ventana Classics event starts, so it’ll keep us busy for a while!
