| Kitesurf Panama |
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Page 3 of 5 
Panamanian kiteboarding pioneer Moises Niddam savors some of the expedition plunder.
Also on board is Scott Wisenbaker, a 32-year-old vice president for Goldman Sachs in New York City, and his girlfriend, Nashara Alberico, 33, a wealth manager with Morgan Stanley. They live in an Upper West Side apartment—“on the 51st floor,” Alberico points out—and met through a mutual friend at Goldman Sachs “on the 41st floor.” Wisenbaker, a Discovery co-owner, paid handsomely to come on the trip. “It’s a lot more money than your typical vacation,” he tells me. “But it’s worth it to be able to get to places you couldn’t otherwise go.” McClurg is selling the lure of discovery, a journey into the unknown, with no expectations. And Wisenbaker, the finance guy, gets it: It’s a classic risk-versus-reward scenario. “You try to put yourself in a location where wind and waves come together,” he says, “but in the end, what you get is what you get.” THE FIRST TRICK TO LEARN IN KITESURFING IS HOW NOT TO DROWN. The second is mastering dazzling moves. The raley, which entails unhooking from the harness and swinging your legs behind you while airborne, is one of the most technical. Mauricio Abreu, a 31-year-old professional kitesurfer, explains to Wisenbaker how to execute this without getting knocked unconscious. “If you get into trouble, pull the bar over your head and do the Superman thing,” advises Abreu, a former pro surfer who was one of the first to kite using a conventional surfboard. 
One of Panama's other attractions
It’s late afternoon on day two when Wisenbaker gets his first chance to ride with the pros. The wind hasn’t made her debut, so this will be a surf session. McClurg drops anchor near a head-high break. Wisenbaker slathers his board with wax and dives off the stern, paddling after Abreu toward an empty, four-mile-long ribbon of sand known as Playa Larga, on Bastimentos, the second-largest island in the Bocas. I grab a snorkel and fins and paddle to shore. The riptide is ruthless, and I’m gasping after ten minutes. But it’s worth it. On the beach, the cascading jungle drips with life. The forests here get more than 230 inches of rain annually, higher than anywhere in Panama. There are ferns, palms, wild pineapples, and turtle grass. Birds screech from the depths of this jade labyrinth. The Bocas span 200 terrestrial square miles (roughly the size of Tucson, Arizona) and sustain 155 square miles of coral reef, along with some 2,500 animal species, including black-bellied whistling ducks, crab-eating raccoons, and leatherback turtles—seafaring giants that can weigh nearly as much as a Volkswagen Beetle. After two hours, we regroup for lunch on Discovery. Wisenbaker is smiling and chatty. This is progress: He hasn’t cracked a grin or muttered more than two sentences since arriving—a gloomy New York winter and freefall on Wall Street have lacquered him with a coat of dourness. But the morning session with the pros provided much-needed cerebral solvent. It helps, too, when chef Nico Chemarin, a Frenchman who specializes in Provençal cuisine, emerges from the galley with platters of prosciutto, cheeses, tropical fruits, and a pear tart. Chemarin is lanky, Kojak-bald, and gruff, and sweats buckets. He is a cooking machine. With the boat plowing headlong into six-foot swells, big enough to make you queasy, Chemarin remains cloistered in the stifling galley, hacking apart raw chicken with a nine-inch cleaver while the hull lurches. Chemarin claims he’s incapable of getting seasick, but “when I go on land, I get ground-sick,” he tells me. Indeed, one evening we dine on Isla Carenero, and Chemarin barely lasts ten minutes before hustling back to the boat. Perhaps, though, it was just the meal: “I was sure we were eating cat food,” he bemoans later. |
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