The Surfer TS2 Camp

The camp

TS2 does one thing: it gives you a bed. A week starts at €290, and that price holds per person in a double or triple too: as a pair, you get a door of your own for the price of a dorm bed. The package is Beach Camp's, lessons, meals and evenings included, and it all happens over there.

The house is on the other side of the bay, two hundred metres from the beach and ten minutes' walk from the centre. Rooms are basic, with air conditioning and hot water, and there is a terrace and a common room with a carrom board. For everything else you cross over: five minutes by tuk-tuk or twenty on foot to Beach Camp, and the operator pays back a thousand rupees a day per room or dorm bed.

The lesson leaves Beach Camp at nine and walks down to the sand. Beginners learn on eight- or nine-foot foam boards, four to an instructor, where the bay lets you stand for ages. People who already surf alone go guiding to Midigama: Lazy Left, which peels and makes a first reef, Coconuts, which holds size when the others go messy, Plantations and Rams.

What you save on the price you spend on journeys: one in the morning, one at night after the karaoke. The camp is open from October to the end of April. For two or three friends on a tight budget, it works. For a first week alone, sleeping where the evenings happen is worth the extra hundred euros.