“I will BURY your kites!”
– the bora wind, on Sunday
Jesolo Kite & Beach festival is huge. Enormous. The largest in Italy, one of the largest in Europe and in the world. It’s an incredible aerial show with huge crowds, thousands of kites, fantastic flying monsters, awesome aerial masterpieces …
… and we chose the very smallest kites flying there to be on the cover photo of an article about the biggest kite festival?
Yes.
Because these delicate little flying wonders show how it doesn’t matter if you put up an 80 meter octopus or a miniature butterfly, a complicated cody you made yourself or a maxi manta you bought, a colourful laundry or an intricate appliqué …
It just needs to fly in the wind. Everything that flies is beautiful.
2 kilometers of beach. More than 200 kiters. More than 200.000 people.
There are no words, no photos, no videos that can convey what Jesolo Beach & Kite festival really is.
You have to be there.
Niki was there.
He’s just a kid – but at a kite festival everyone is a kid.
In awe.
“Can I help, can I help?”
“Sure, Niki – pull down this manta.”
In a nice 20 km/h wind the manta didn’t even flinch. It was almost possible for Niki to climb up the line and do some kite aerial photography up there all by himself.
But he was not finished with the manta. He and his family went for a stroll along the beach, and came back after a couple of hours – walking two kilometers on sand and through the crowds takes time.
Due to some unfortunate circumstances (get well soon, Vik!) only two of us were there flying kites. When two people put four lines in the air, clip the laundry on and watch the kites fly, it’s nearly impossible for one to leave, even for the toilet.
The wind was a bit gusty, the manta is always a bit naughty, and the rokkaku was perhaps a bit too high for our comfort. And, of course, there are other people flying their kites close by … sometimes too close.
So if we wanted to tend to our core business, kite aerial photography, we had to pull two kites down.
The kite aerial session was a complete flop though … we forgot to charge our Insta, and our venerable Nikon decided it was time to pull a prank on us. In the late afternoon the sun was low behind all the kites of the festival, the settings got mixed, and all the photos from above are totally overexposed.
Well … better luck next time.
We have just finished our unsuccessful KAP session when Niki and his family came back (thanks again, Loni, for the cold ones!).
“Hey Niki, why don’t we put the manta back in the air?”
Manta is a huge beast, and the wind was getting more and more gusty. It’s a tricky business to make it fly without crashing the festival, wiping out the spectators, or cutting off an arm or two.
But Niki was indomitable … inflating the huge kite, pulling the ropes, running around … untangling the tail, piloting the beast through the gusts, evading the swishing strings … until the magnificent beast finally rose into the blue Jesolo sky.
And down on the sand Niki drew this:
He is hooked … 😉
After such a perfect day we were completely exhausted, but not finished yet.
It was time to light up the night!
Night kite flying is … awesome. Huge beasts filled with LEDs, eerie apparitions in the sky, glowing in all sorts of pulsating colours … the lines going up into the black sky, the pilot kites invisible.
And our LED Astronaut joined his friends in the night sky for the first time!
Even the moon, the round, unbounded high-flying night kite, was impressed.
But then the wind got tired too … and the most fantastic day of kites was finally over.
Sunday started with a rumble – the table and one of the chairs on our hotel room balcony fell over, waking us abruptly.
“What’s this, 40 km/h?”
“That gust was over 70 …”
Filippo got his prayers answered. The Sunday is the most important day of the festival, as the biggest crowd is expected. So Filippo, Nat, Angelo and the rest of the crew were praying for months: “Dear God, we don’t need much … but please, bring us wind on Sunday.”
And God decided it was time to be a generous God. the wind came. From the northeast. Cold and fierce.
The bora.
“Can’t we somehow store this wind? There’s enough of it for five festivals!”
We had to get home on Sunday, and the problem was not just that the kites couldn’t fly – only Daniela the Wind Witch and the crazy stunt kite flyers were enjoying the blows and the sand – it was that the situation in Slovenia was deteriorating fast. One of the sections of the highway was already closed due to high winds, and the other route was fast approaching the wind limit: the gusts in Vipava valley were already over 80 km/h.
“The wind will soon subside!” screamed Nat over the increasingly insane blows.
It was time to go … to run.
We dug up our kite bag from the piled sand, drag it to the car, and left wobblily … The bora at home was blowing just over 90 km/h, and the road was about to close.
But as it so often happens, all it took for the festival to get back to perfect was us leaving.
At four PM the first kites were up.
At six the festival was beyond magnificent … again.
And we were in a car near the Slovenian border. All the roads were open, the wind was perfect, the sun was shining.
Damn.
Maybe we saved the festival – by going away …
There are so many people we owe big thanks to for this awesome weekend in Jesolo.
To Filippo, Nat, Angelo, and the diligent crew that created this amazing, incredible, fantastic Jesolo Beach & Kite festival. We still can’t really comprehend what you managed to create – for the fourth time in a row. We are in awe. Congratulations!
To mayor Cristofer De Zotti and the city of Jesolo, the staff at Vidi Miramare hotel, the security guys, and everyone who made the festival possible.
And of course to all the kite flying friends we are so so lucky to have … Roberto, Daniela, Bear, Massimo, Sonja, Gerhard, Ina, Stephan, Arjan, Denis, Betty, Franco, Simon, Emanuela, Livio, Thomas, Karin, Arnaldo, Luca, Sara, Volker, Paola, Giancarlo, Herman, Liana, Edy, Viola, Volodimir, Guenther, Roger, Sandro … all two hundred and more of them.
And Niki.
Thank you so much – and see you again soon … somewhere on a kite field, with a line in hand.
p.s.
What happens if you start recording a slow motion video on your phone at a kite festival, and then throw the phone up in the air?
This:
Beautiful photos courtesy of Alisa and Loni Jovanović, other photos shot by us. Kite aerial photos ruined by Nikon P330 on MASAG β rokkaku.