Niceville native Lance Moss and his current wife, Christine, were in their early 20s and looked like a couple in their early 20s. Huge risk.
After watching a VHS tape of the surf in southwestern Nicaragua, a friend showed them how they had bought an acre of land on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, Central America, with money that was meant to go towards their college tuition.
Now Moss has come to life. Completely Not like everyone else who graduated from Niceville High School with Lance in the ’90s.
“We call ourselves the ‘Stoke Brokers,'” Lance said with a laugh during a recent phone conversation.
Along with their two children and a staff of 15 to 20 people, the pair run a boutique surf camp that has been part of Nicaragua’s surfing boom since its early days.
Surfing’s Wild West
Now, you’re probably thinking, To yourself – Surfing in Nicaragua…what?
“99% of people, including our parents, thought we were totally crazy,” Lance adds. But the gamble has paid off.
Well, that’s a story in itself. When Lance and Christine arrived in the southwestern tip of Nicaragua in 1999, whole The area has nothing but great waves for surfing. Nicaragua was only known in the United States for its brutal civil war that led to the Iran-Contra affair, which greatly embarrassed the Reagan Administration and led to the television appearances and criminal career of Colonel Oliver North.
By that time, The civil war had been a thing of the past for about a decade. But the huge boom that surf tourism has created has not yet landed on the cover of the world’s most famous surf magazines or on the back of Delta Airlines seats. A friend who completed his PhD in history with a thesis on surf tourism told him: When they arrived in 1999, the majority of the country’s economic production came from agriculture – not surprising in a country with lush volcanic soil. By the turn of the millennium, tourism had become the main source of income, with surf tourism becoming the most important subsector of the tourism economy.
Lance says it’s a win for surfers and locals alike. “So it’s kind of crazy that a bunch of kids came here just to chase waves and changed the entire economic structure of the country,” Moss says. “There was no cell service, no phones, no internet. No one here had a car or a bike. There was one phone in town and everyone called back to get in touch with their families, and now it’s exploded. We’re putting paved roads all along the coastline. Everybody here has a bike. A lot of people have trucks.”
Start a business
Lance’s father was a fighter pilot in Vietnam, so he was fascinated by planes from an early age. “If my dad had ever said to me, ‘You should be a fighter pilot,’ I definitely would have been a fighter pilot,” he recalls. But the stress and disillusionment his father endured after two tours of duty in Vietnam translated into a different dream for his son, Lance says. “I was an only child, so my parents told me, ‘You’re going to start your own business. You’re an entrepreneur. you “Start your own business.”
Kristin reminds me with a laugh that the Mosses are “not planners.” They say they never really were. After Kristin graduated from Flagler College, they bought an acre of land and decided to move to Nicaragua.
They quickly realized that this was a perfect environment for surfing, yet not many people were making a living from it. “There was no one here,” Lance says. “There were only about five to 10 surfers in the whole country. The waves were incredible.”
So they started on the ground floor.. literally, Jungle 1st floor.
In 2000, Lance and Christine gathered with a few other friends on the land and built their first home, “a little box in the jungle” (now a kitchen), which later became Surf Charter. They said, “I immediately saw an opportunity to guide people and take them fishing, because I grew up chartering boats and investing in them as a crew, and I love fishing, and I love to serve. So I decided, OK, if we I intend to If you’re going to show people around, you might as well make money doing it.”
By 2002, they were thriving entrepreneurs in Nicaragua. 22 years and two children later, they’re still doing it. There’s a healthy dose of surfing and fishing. To Their Business and, 80% of business teeth return We invite guests to our surfing camps. “absolutely What we love most about our jobs is that every week, it’s like we have another extended family come visit us, have fun, hang out at the beach, go outside and have a cold beer, watch the sunset, catch up and see how everyone’s families are doing.”
Life in Nicaragua
noisy The sound of a generator When you start a call, a trill sounds in the background. Initially, we were planning to video chat, but the internet we get from our cellular connection was too slow. They get The building with its 50-foot tower above the Capitol was muted that day, so Christine and Lance rushed inside so we could all hear better.
As you can imagine, life in Nicaragua is different than in the United States. For example, childcare is different.is much cheaper than anywhere else and it’s different. What’s more, children in the region benefit from a strong dollar. “There’s a huge disparity and wealth between the United States and Nicaragua, the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere,” Rance said. “There are a lot of people here, Really They are willing to work. And the minimum wage they earn is obviously what That’s what someone makes in America.”
He added that the country suffers from undeserved negative perceptions due to a long civil war that tore the country apart in the 1980s between the U.S.-backed Somoza family dictatorship and Soviet-backed guerrillas.
Political instability in 2018 The situation has not improved and many of their charters Was cancel Even though nothing happened in their area. Really difficult It’s also hard for renters to convince their wives to let them stay,” Moss said.
Looking ahead
As you can see from this story, Moss that’s right They seem interested in building a Surfari empire in the near future, but other groups in the region have already started doing so. “There are so many options these days,” Kristin added, “so when you see something working, the best compliment you can give is to copy it, right?”
still, it is Really change Their business model. In the end, it works. “That’s the nature of Nicaragua. We’ve always To some extent It is operated here and now. Let’s try whatever works,” Christine added.
detail
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