Momo Surf School

The camp

Momo puts its guests up in a renovated white Canarian house on the seafront of Caleta de Famara, looking across the bay to the Risco cliff and out to La Graciosa. It takes twelve guests at most. Every room, shared or private, has its own bathroom, a sitting corner and a terrace on the sea, and around them are a shared kitchen, a living room, a garden of volcanic stone and a pool. At sunset the last light lands on the cliff.

The school is French, founded by Mateo Cotton, and lessons are taught in French, while the house itself draws guests from everywhere. Famara beach starts at the end of the village: three kilometres of sand under the Risco, lefts and rights at every stage of the tide, the beach the whole island learns on. The swell is nearly always there and the wind decides. In December, its best month, expect two clean days in a week, clean meaning swell the wind has not chopped up, and the trade wind takes most of the others. That is where sleeping a short walk from the beach pays: you see the water first thing, before the wind, without getting in a car. On days Famara has nothing, the instructors pick the beach by wind, tide and level, and the village has its own reefs, San Juan for intermediates and up, and El Muelle in the middle of Caleta.

No meals are included. The kitchen is shared, breakfast is an extra, and dinner means Caleta's restaurants. Caleta is a small fishing village with sand for streets, and the evenings are quiet: no programme, the terrace, then a table in the village.

Right for learning in French in a small house with the beach on foot. If you want dinner served and late nights, this is the wrong village.