homie baiha salinas

It's soon two weeks ago since I arrived at Nicola Bertoldi and his Blue dream hotel (bluedreamhotel.com) in Bahia Salinas in the very north west corner of costa rica. Nicola is an Italien (going costa rica'n with his tica wife katie) and opened the first kiteboarding school in the area 9 years ago. He is an super friendly character and an awesome old school kiter (jumping high, really

high) always very amusing to watch!

Because my aim was to stay here to improve my kiteboarding skills for as long as my economy let me I agreed with Nicola to help out teaching and finally some hours bartender work in the evenings. All is very relaxed and have worked out smooth, in the end of the day I get the accomondation for free and heaps of kite tips/tricks in return;)

What about kiting in bahia salinas?? Firstly the windsstatics for this place is insane, is one of the worlds 10th windiest places, it's kite weather here 300 days per year!I have been able to kite every day since i got here, the only day that I passed was due to too strong wind!! It is a combination of trade winds and a mountain venturi effect which creates a monster wind machine. Constant winds comes in from Nicaragua. From the beginning of November to the end of May and July you can kitesurf almost 90% of the days! The windiest months are January and February with an average of 23 knots! (look at Nicola's wind modification at windguru, tap in bahia salinas and then chose modification "bluedreamhotel", which will add approx. 60-70% to windgurus numbers, which is more accurate for the bay). It's truly an beautiful spot to kite, with turtles and colourful fishes of all sort crusing underneath you, the only real down side is the gust. This is no doubt the roughest place I have ever kited, the gust here can be pretty overwhelming at times, with a sudden increase of maybe 15 knots. So before jumping high here, is well invested time to grap a imperal ( local beer) and just study the wind for a while. But as nicola says, it's a bit of the charm and if you're able to pull out some new tricks while you here you can be pretty damn sure that you're able to pull them out where ever else you might go!

If you want to read more about kiting in bahia salinas, riders guide puplished a nice article http://www.sbckiteboard.com/travel_guide?news_id=736&uniqid=1507, and if you intressted in whats going on right now at blue dream hotel and kite school look into our kite blogg at http://costaricakite.com/kite-blog/.

Hope to see some of you down here soon!;)
Carro