Blackstone Surf Camp

The camp

Blackstone puts its students up in a villa on the TF-47 at Marazul, right by Callao Salvaje on the Adeje coast: a lawn under palm trees, a pool with a timber deck, a pergola, and the sea with La Gomera on the horizon. The house is built for living as a group: a lounge of long cushioned benches opening onto the garden, a fitted kitchen with two long tables, a barbecue, a ping-pong table, a slackline. You sleep four to a room, in a double, in a triple or on your own, and every bathroom is shared. The house belongs to a school: Blackstone has taught surfing in the south of Tenerife since 2009, out of its Surf Center at Playa de las Américas, which is affiliated to the Canarian Surf Federation.

Lessons happen at Playa de las Américas, the sand-and-reef beach the town is named after. The shuttle leaves in the morning and the day is spent down there: a two-hour lesson from about 9:30, lunch at one of the seafront restaurants, a second lesson at 4pm on the Blackstone Pack, back at the house around 6:30. In between, the Surf Center's showers, changing rooms and lockers are your base. Six students to an instructor, in two groups: one learning to stand, the other starting to ride the face of the wave, left and right. An ordinary day means whitewater and the small waves near the shore: even in January, the beach's best month, the swell is missing one day in two, and those small days are exactly when the schools of the south bring their groups here. When a south-westerly swell arrives under a wind off the land, the reef breaks both ways and the intermediate group finally gets out past the foam; in January that happens three days in a week. In summer the waves shrink: a July week is good for starting, much less so for improving.

Sleeping at Marazul rather than on the Las Américas seafront trades the resort's noise for a garden, at the cost of a ten to fifteen minute drive that the shuttle does for you, morning and evening. Without it, the 473 bus runs straight to the beach and a taxi is about €15. In winter the air reaches 23°C by day and drops to 15°C at night; the water runs from 18°C in February to 23°C from August to October. The wetsuit comes with the rest of the gear, and a jumper earns its place in the garden after dark.

Only breakfast is included, served until 11am. In the evening you cook in the shared kitchen, usually with others, and the barbecue gets lit for everyone. Most guests come alone, many of them in their twenties, so the house fills up at night with people who spent the day on the same beach. Sunset is watched from the lawn, behind La Gomera. The Blackstone Pack adds one outing a week, snorkelling or surf skate, and the Yoga & Surf package a yoga class every weekday. For a night out, the island's loud evenings are in Las Américas, by bus or taxi: nothing is within walking distance. If you are travelling alone, want to surf twice a day and spend your evenings with a group around a pool, this is a good place; if you need a bathroom of your own or dinner on the table, look elsewhere.