Twin Fin Surf Camp

The camp

Twin Fin is a finca in the hills of Adeje, at Tijoco Bajo above Callao Salvaje: a tiled Canarian house, palm trees, and the stepped farm terraces of south-west Tenerife all around. The pool and the yoga terrace look out over the ocean. You sleep in a bunk-bed dorm, a private room with its own bathroom, or a glamping tent pitched on the lava, with a double bed and a terrace of its own. The lounge has a fireplace, the kitchen is shared at set hours, and there is a barbecue and a covered coworking corner. A small team runs the house, helped by volunteers who stay a few weeks.

On surf days the van drives down to the beaches of the south, picked for the tide. They work best at low tide, and when low tide falls late in the afternoon, that is when the lesson happens. Two hours of teaching, then up to an hour of free surf if the tide allows, and one rest day a week. An ordinary day is foam and pop-ups on a dark-sand beach below a shelf of rock. The good days come in winter: this coast sits out of the trade wind that blows the exposed islands apart, and its mornings stay clean while Lanzarote is white. In summer the swell is mostly gone. The school starts people from zero, but Tenerife keeps its reef waves for surfers who already stand up, at Las Américas, twenty minutes' drive below.

The van does that drive: no car to rent, no parking to hunt for on the seafront. There are as many yoga sessions as surf lessons, on the terrace facing the ocean, which helps you keep going all week. The water runs from 18 °C in February to 23 °C from August to October. El Balito, a small cove, is a twenty-minute walk.

Breakfast is included, big and heavy on fruit; other meals you make in the shared kitchen. Evenings stay on the hill, by the pool or the barbecue, watching the sun go down over the sea. There is no bar within walking distance, and the island's loud nights are in Las Américas, with no shuttle to get there. The Full Experience package adds a trip up the Teide for a sunset above the clouds and the stars after it. For someone travelling alone on a tight budget who wants as much yoga as surf and a house to belong to, it is a good choice; if you want to go out at night, stay down the hill.