Endless Summer Tenerife

The camp

Endless Summer is a hostel, a real one, and that is what sets it apart from the surf houses of the south. Two neighbouring houses on Avenida Austria, in San Eugenio on the slope above Costa Adeje, run as a single place: a reception desk open from 8am to 11pm, fully fitted kitchens, a patio painted with murals, terraces facing the sunset. You sleep in a dorm, wooden bunks, each bed closed off by a curtain with its own locker and reading light; one women-only dorm has its own bathroom and terrace. There are no private rooms. And not everyone is here to surf: the hostel also takes divers and people passing through, and that mix is what makes the house lively.

The surfing is the hostel's own school, open only to its guests. The van takes you down to Playa de las Américas, ten minutes by road, usually to El Medio and sometimes to Las Piscinas when the sea calls for it. A session lasts two hours including the theory, on a soft board, with no more than six students to an instructor, at a time set by the tide. Las Américas breaks over rock and its sand is ringed by reef: the schools use it on the small days, and that is where you will ride your first metres, with someone beside you. On the day everything lines up, in winter, an Atlantic swell arrives under the trade wind, which blows offshore here: in January the beach is clean three days in a week, and La Izquierda, the reef left a kilometre away, four. When the sea is too big or flat, the session turns into surfskate. If you already ride a hard board, the standard week will not be enough; the hostel has a semi-private option, ask for it.

The water is 18°C in February and 23°C from August to October. Wetsuit, rash vest and booties are provided, and on this rocky bottom the booties earn their place. In summer La Izquierda is mostly flat and the beach gets mainly small waves: a July week is fine for a first go, much less so for improving. San Eugenio is about twenty minutes from Tenerife South airport, and everything else is on foot: the beaches ten minutes away, a big supermarket a few steps from the door, Siam Park next door. You can skip the hire car.

No meals are included, not even breakfast. Coffee is free every morning, and you cook alongside everyone else, which is often how people meet here. Evenings mean the terrace for the sunset, barbecues in the patio and a quiet neighbourhood. For a proper night out, the Las Américas seafront, where the island is loudest after dark, is ten minutes away. Right for going alone on a small budget, meeting people and surfing two hours a day; if you want to be fed or to sleep behind a door that closes, look elsewhere.