High Voltage Surf Camp

The camp

High Voltage is an eight-room house above Playa del Hombre, a black-sand beach on the east coast of Gran Canaria, in the municipality of Telde. It sits halfway between surf camp and small boutique hotel: walls of volcanic stone, a low pallet bed facing a window full of sea in the ocean-view room, and out front a terrace of artificial grass behind a stone wall, with loungers, benches and a long wooden table. Inside there is a common room with a ping-pong table, a cinema room, an equipped kitchen and a laundry. Leo, the head coach, has been surfing for forty years and runs the house with Anastasiya.

Lessons are on the beach below the house, two minutes on foot. Black sand and no rocks: a bottom you can fall onto a hundred times without thinking about it, which in your first week matters more than the shape of the wave. The ISA-qualified coaches take beginners and intermediates, five days in the week, with board, leash and wetsuit provided. From the terrace you see the whole bay, so you know what the sea is doing before you pull the wetsuit on. Once you are progressing, a premium session with Leo can be booked on top, and a Surf Safari heads to other beaches on the island when the group is big enough. The house surfs all year, in water that never drops below 18 °C. What nobody publishes is swell data for this beach: neither its best month nor how many days in a week it works.

The location saves you two things. The airport is ten minutes away, so neither your first day nor your last goes on transfers. And the lesson needs no car and no pick-up, while the island's well-known waves, La Cícer and El Confital, are in Las Palmas, about twenty minutes north, on a city beach that belongs to the people who live there.

Evenings happen at the house. Playa del Hombre is a residential area with not much around it, and eating out means a car or a taxi; Las Palmas and its old town, Vegueta, are about twenty minutes away. The house runs barbecue nights, paid on top, and when the group is big enough a beach bar and volleyball. The house says two guests in three are women travelling alone. Right for someone on their own who wants to learn on their doorstep and is not looking for a party.