Kirsty Jones in Cape Verde Click on photo for more! Photo by David Sims

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David Sims' Cape Verde Photogallery

The main thing I love about kitesurfing is searching for waves and wind while traveling to unspoiled remote spots that have a soulful vibe and unique culture. The Cape Verde Islands sounded like the perfect solution.

I had recently joined the Flexifoil Kitesurfing Team and needed to get pictures of myself riding their new equipment in clear warm waters with blue sky and good wind, which isn’t always guaranteed in the UK!

I grabbed the Kitesurf photographer David Sims at a windless kitesurfing competition in England and decided to organise a last-minute wind and wave mission. With fast and efficient help from ‘Planet Kitesurf’ (the kitesurfing holiday company) I was on my way a week later.

The Cape Verde islands lie in the Atlantic Ocean, 620km off West Africa’s coast of Mauritania. There are 10 major islands, some of them hilly and lush, all of them unspoiled with their own unique beauty. The islanders are a mixture of African, Portuguese, Mediterranean and Latin influences that combine to produce a flavour that’s distinctly ‘Cabo’. The islands are gifted with the warm trade winds which blow from April to November before the big swells begin to pump in from the Atlantic in Nov-March, thus delivering Cape Verde’s famous waves.

I visited the flatter, desert-like island of Sal in May this year, which has a wave I have dreamed of surfing for many years called Punta Preta. Being in the middle of the Atlantic, these islands get the grunt of swell and wind that builds up as weather systems cross the ocean, and I knew that once I had experienced the famous Cape Verde spirit I would be drawn back there forevermore.

Check out our photos from the trip! David Sims' Cape Verde Photogallery

Also, check out David Sims' website at www.davidsimsphotography.