TL;DR
Location (Isla Blanca): perfect learning conditions - sandy beach, shallow knee-deep water, not overcrowded, good wind 13-20 knots. There is a 35 pesos entrance fee is you come with your own car. Bumpy road, took around ~1hour from Cancun center/Zona hotelera.
Instructor: We could not have asked for a better instructor - Daniel is one of the best instructors we have seen, with more than 10 years of experience (among other places he was teaching in Berkeley, California). Patient, puts safety first, always encouraging, very calm (especially in situations when you as a student are not :)), you always feel that situation is under control when he's around.
Price: comparing to other schools very competitive, especially if you take a group lesson (like we did)!
Communication: handled everything through e-mail, very timely responses. They always let us know if there were good conditions for kiting, and if they weren't, we postponed the lesson.
Satisfaction: total Highly recommend this school!
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Based on the excellent reviews here, we got in touch with Airlift Kiteboarding well in advance (in October for January lessons). They replied promptly, letting us know about the options and suggesting we contact them about two weeks before we come to confirm availability, weather forecast and schedule.
My wife and I decided to take a group lesson of 9 hours (it turned out we needed some more practice and extended for another 3 hours and after that borrowed the kite and practiced on our own). Group lesson looks like this: we each got our own gear (harness, leash, helmet, rash shirt), and we shared the kite, board, instructor and the lesson. Kiteboarding can be pretty exhausting, so we were able to rest inbetween turns (approx. 15 minutes each). We were a bit doubtful at first how the whole group lesson will look like, but it turned out to be great for us.
Before we came to Cancun, we bought a small 3m2 trainer kite (Rush V Pro 300) and practiced for a few hours to get a feel for flying the kite. We also watched a few YouTube videos about kiteboarding, learning about wind window, kite control, etc. so we were able to progress a bit faster in the first lesson because of that. Flying a proper water kite is different though, because you are hooked into the harness, the kite is bigger and you have the ability to (de)power using your bar. If you care about your well-being you should take the lessons and learn how to handle the kite from a proper instructor. So, first lesson looked like this: Daniel taught us how to set up the kite, pump it, tie the lines to the kite, about different kite shapes, how to position the kite before launching, about wind window, etc. Then he launched the kite (with our assist) and we went to the water to practice flying the kite and later body dragging. We had a lot of fun!
Our instructor was Daniel, the owner of Airlift Kiteboarding school. You can tell that he really enjoys teaching and loves the sport. He is one of the best instructors we've seen (from other sports), with more than 10 years of experience (among other places he was teaching in Berkeley, California). We really liked his style of teaching, going with our own pace, not forcing anything, and at the same time not losing time doing something that we obviously mastered. Another very important thing is that, at least at the beginning, you don't know how to handle different situations, and you can very quickly get yourself into a bad one (this is part of the learning experience). But with Daniel you feel really safe, not only because he is very calm, but also because he tells you the right thing to do. Also, he also always told us what *he* was going to do in advance, and all in all the lessons were very profesionally guided. I will remember his constant question: "If I say 'Let go', what are you going to do?" (Let go).
In the second lesson (which was 4 days later, because there was no wind inbetween), we repeated what we learned in the previous lesson and learned how to body drag upwind. We also practiced power strokes without the board, and at the end we got on the board and practiced water start. I managed to already ride one way a bit on the second try.
In the third lesson, we repeated the power stroke exercises and practiced water start + riding both ways. I have been snowboarding for 10+ years so I picked it up pretty fast, and my wife had more problems with the board control. We decided to take 3 more hours of lessons.
Our fourth lesson was a few days later. I was so excited when I saw my wife finally riding. It just 'clicked' for her. So don't give up too soon, sometimes you just need more practice. Before we were mostly riding downwind, but Daniel gave us a few tips on how to ride upwind.
We liked it so much that we decided to rent the kite the next day and practice on our own, but with Daniel keeping an eye on us. read more
