Are we all artists?

Where do we see the light, the colour, the detail? How do we put them all together? From artists to , to dancers, to players. We all have an art. We see the world in our own eyes. We live it in our own way. Each one of us has the ability to showcase our designs whether it be on the water or on the stage we all have our fantasies.

When I was a child I was convinced I didn’t have a talented bone in my body. I wasn’t particularly good at anything. I know people look at me and think I was one of those star athlete kids but nothing could be further from the truth. I was so embarrassed by my lack of co-ordination in school I was relieved when I got mono in grade 9 and was excused from gym class for the remainder of that year and the follow year too. I hated team sports and running around playing games until I discovered snowboarding.

Snowboarding to me was an outlet. An outlet from my life. My life was not an easy one. My mom was divorced and my little brother lived with his dad. I spent most of the time alone. Tormented by the process of growing up I turned to smoking weed and drinking which helped me make a place for myself. A place where I belonged. I went up to the mountain as much as possible. I loved the sense of freedom I got when gliding down the slopes on carpets of freshly laid powder. It became my obsession. Riding is what I lived for. I felt like a bird looking back from the chair lift to the cloud forest settling in-between the crevices of the mountains, up here nothing mattered. The better you rode, the cooler you were. The latest trends were easily stolen from the local ski shop and if you were good enough the hash smoking hide out was well hidden off the powder chair. Life was great up here. Part of a crowd of rebels and if you were included it gave you a name. At that time snowboarding was still new and few girls were doing it. You could count on one hand the number of girls that first year. We kept up to the boys, didn’t fuss and learned to take a beating on the run. This is where my obsessions came form.

10 years later after riding 30 – 40 days a season I became bored. I rode all i’ve ever wanted and after dropping a fresh deep line in France on my own I decided to look for a new sport. I tried many different avenues of sport and I was down to white water kayaking or kite surfing. These were the only two things I thought would give me the adrenalin rush I was looking for.

The first time I saw kite surfing I was mesmerized. These men were defying the laws of gravity with speed. I liked it. Dangerous, colourful like dancers spinning on ice. I felt like I was a child watching Disney on Ice and I wanted to be Snow White. The was back in 2003 and gear was still unsafe. The way I learned about it was from a guy wearing a t-shirt of smashed up skull. I asked him what it was and he told me how he was slammed into a cliff by a gust of wind while kite surfing and I knew I had to see this sport. Over the next 5 years every time it was windy I would drive down to the beach and watch these crazy few guys ride.

It wasn’t until I traveled to South America did I learn to kite myself. I was 29, newly divorced and on the trip of my life. Eventually I ended up falling in love with the sport as I knew I would. I ended up living, riding and working in Jericoacoara, Brazil for a couple of years before embarking upon opening my own school in Nicaragua.

Currently you can find me working on building Nicaragua’s first kite surfing resort on Lake Nicaragua. The 19th largest lake in the world with 330 days of year of wind.

For more information on Amayo Kite Beach contact me at kitenicaragua@gmail.com