Baptiste Mure in South Africa

French freestyle windsurfer Baptiste Mure has just released his video “Sunbird South Africa”. It shows some excellent flat water action and the nature around Cape Town. We asked the French rider three questions about his time in Cape Town.

Was this your first trip to South Africa?

I have never been to Cape Town, but every winter I was watching my friends going there to enjoy nice wind conditions. At this time of the year, South Africa belongs to the locations with the strongest winds on earth, a real wind engine! This winter I have decided to follow my two friends Bastien Rocco Rama and Pierre Garambois from the LA BAR Team in February. We rode almost every day during the two weeks over there and we captured images of each other. As I’m a low weight rider I decided to bring only two sails: 4.0m and 4.4m. And the decision was fine.

What was your impression on the life in South Africa and will you return next year?

Our windsurfing passion brings us around the globe to discover new spots every year. South Africa is fulfilled of freestyle and wave spots around Cape Town and I believe that’s known quite well in the windsurfing scene. The windsurfer lifestyle in holidays over there is idyllic, but it is way more different for the majority of the population living there. The country has been “developed”, but this situation is not profitable for everyone and you can directly experience inequalities.
Another aspect, which surprised me within a fortnight there, was the fact that I didn’t meet any local windsurfer. However you will meet more than half of the windsurfing pro riders there. You don’t find the windsurf culture as you could do in Moulay, Morocco or Jericoacoara in Brazil for example.

What else did you do besides windsurfing?

Besides windsurfing, I spent a lot of time discovering the nature around Cape Town. It is useless to tell you that nature lover will be fully satisfied in Cape Town. It offers an extraordinary fauna and flora. The “Sunbird” that you can find in this video was one of the beautiful surprises of my trip.