Disneyland Of Extreme Watersports Docks At Camarines Sur
All the excitement of water sports converges at Camarines Sur’s Camsur Watersports Complex (CWC). It all begins on the first time you try it, and then peaks at when it all begins to be addicting. Imagine this: automatic cable system gliding you through a six hectare cruise of water track where you are free to touch the water surface, ski over ramps, and break self borders.
CWC, the biggest, best water sports complex in the entire world, has attracted the best of the best wakeboarders.
Australian wakeboarding champion and world wakeboarding placer Reuben Buchanan has made CWC his second home. Devoting more than a decade now to extreme water sports, Buchanan was tapped by CamSur Governor Luis Raymund Villafuerte to come see what has become of Pili in Camarines Sur.
“When the governor first asked me to see this, I just said why not check it out. But once I’ve set foot here, it’s amazing how it all dawned on me. It’s the best in the world! All the wakeboarders who’ve traveled half the globe to see this all say the same thing - this is by far the best wakeboarding arena in all they’ve seen,” Buchanan said.
Since experiencing CWC, Buchanan had hardly gone back to Australia. “Wakeboarding, which has been my life for the last 12 years, is nothing short of addicting. Once you’ve tried it, it’ll all be like gliding to one trick after another,” Buchanan said.
Wakeboarding sets the extreme action to full motion via 8 to 12 meters of an overhead cable, allowing the wake boarder to cruise the water surface through specially designed pylons. With the cables running clockwise between 20-65 km/h speeds around the biggest man-made lake track built for wakeboarding, the rider circles the track via different strokes of gliding motions while the speed lets him do exhibitions on the built-in ramps and all sorts of flips.
It is like skateboarding on water but different in some ways: one, you fall into the water so there are lesser chances for dangerous bumps and injuries; and two, the board has a built-in pair of shoes that you can control and swing up the air or to ant possible desired motion.
The cable-run lake track has a six-point cable ski system so six participants can enjoy the thrills of water sports all at one time.
“In other countries, there’s just about one month or two of summer. But here in the Philippines, the weather is almost good for wakeboarding all year round which is why it has attracted a lot of my fellow Australians, Germans, Americans. Almost all kinds of wakeboarding athletes have come here and stayed because of the weather and the world-class cable system,” explained Buchanan, who now also makes sure that the machine at the CWC runs well.
Not only foreigners have gotten into the wakeboarding zone in CamSur. Filipinos who can turn the board in jaw dropping stunts have become addicted too.
The other cable sports made extremely available at the CWC aside from wakeboarding are cable skiing, kneeboarding, water skiing and wake skating.
In cable skiing or ‘riding the cable,’ wake surfers get full command of both water and air. Unlike surfers who need to gamble with the tides, wake boarders easily execute tricks. Nontheless, it is still not injury free.
Before you try wakeboarding, you are made to sign a waiver should the participant be injured. What’s amazing is that sprained ankles or shattered knees are seemingly of no consequence.
(Report gathered from Atin Ito Philippine News Feature Vol. 32 No. 05, p. 22, May 2007 issue. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Author not specified.)
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