Wakeboarding: where to ride in winter

Wake­board­ing is not just a sport, but a form of med­i­ta­tion and even a por­tal to anoth­er real­i­ty, allow­ing you to com­plete­ly dis­solve in space. But it’s one thing to ride a board in your city, and quite anoth­er to ride in the most pic­turesque places in the world. Which ones? We’ll tell you now.

Wake­board­ing is one of those sports that can be prac­ticed on almost any more or less large body of water. How­ev­er, top-lev­el ath­letes con­quer even seem­ing­ly com­plete­ly unsuit­able places on the plan­et for wak­en­ing.

Thus, Parks Boni­fay rode ice­bergs in New­found­land, Bri­an Grubb maneu­vered a wakeskate through the canyons of Jor­dan, and Pedro Cal­das, pic­tured here, pol­ished the roofs of boats in the city of Afua, which is con­sid­ered the Venice of Brazil.

How­ev­er, if your goal is to find not just adven­tures to your lik­ing, but points on the map where nature itself has cre­at­ed the ide­al scenery for board­ing, it is bet­ter to pay atten­tion to oth­er places.

Take the turquoise waters, sur­round them with lush trop­ics and you have Bora Bora — a wakesurf­ing mec­ca that attracts surf­ing enthu­si­asts from all over the world. The feel­ing is as if you are walk­ing on water in real par­adise.

Do you want the sweet life? Choose Lake Como for skat­ing — the shores with world-famous vil­las and the boats of mil­lion­aires and movie stars will fly past you.

Look­ing for more sur­re­al land­scapes? Head to Dubai, where count­less sky­scrap­ers jux­ta­pose the serene waters of the Per­sian Gulf.

Well, if you want to feel like you’re on anoth­er plan­et, try wake­board­ing in the Kuril Islands or Kam­chat­ka. By the way, this year three doc­u­men­taries about extreme sports in these places were released: “Kuril Islands. On the south­ern shores”, “Wave 41” and “His­to­ry of Kam­chat­ka snow­board­ing”.