WAVE CULTURE Tenerife

The camp

WAVE CULTURE is a German operator from Karlsruhe that runs its own camps in Portugal, and this one in La Mareta, a quiet village on Tenerife's south-east coast between the airport and El Médano. The house is white, with a Tenerife Surf Camp sign, a planted garden strung with hammocks, an outdoor bar where breakfast is served, and a roof terrace looking out at the mountains and the sea. Tine and Jonathan run the camp on site. Standard rooms are single or double, with a bathroom shared by four at most; superior rooms have their own and sleep up to four; the two dorms, four and six wooden beds with curtains, open onto the terrace.

The basic week covers the room, breakfast and three 75-minute yoga sessions on the roof, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Surfing is bought separately, as a Surf Pack: two and a half hours of lessons a day, in English, at three levels, from the first pop-up to the cutback. The coaches work from a base on a beach that you get to on your own: there is no shuttle, and most guests rent a car at the airport and park it outside the house.

The south-east is the windy coast. El Médano, five minutes away under Montaña Roja, is one of Europe's best kite spots, and that wind blows on the waves too; it is why the camp sells kite lessons with a partner school in the village, and why you will mostly surf in the morning. An ordinary day is whitewater on a sand beach, on a softboard in a 3 mm wetsuit. The island's sheltered reefs are on the other side, at Las Américas, twenty-five minutes by road. The water runs from 18 °C in February to 23 °C from August to October. Playa La Mareta is 400 metres away, and La Tejita, the island's biggest sand beach, is right next to it.

Evenings happen in the garden: a camp dinner once a week, barbecues of fish, seafood and Canarian wine, the pool table, the lounge with its TV. La Mareta is away from the resorts and the clubs, on purpose; for beach bars and live music, El Médano is five minutes' drive. Family weeks run in summer, autumn and at Christmas. For a family or a couple with a car who want to mix surf, kite and yoga without living in a resort, it is the right place; for a week where everything is included and someone drives you to the water, it is not.