Where to surf in December

December re-forms the winter trio, the Canaries, Morocco and Sri Lanka, and two more coasts peak alongside them on nothing the trio has in common. Northern Spain does it on 14° water and a learners' beach at Zarautz that is clean fifteen days out of thirty, half of midwinter, two hours from most of Europe. Panama does it on the dry-season wind: twenty-six clean days out of thirty at Playa Venao, on a sandbar bay at a difficulty a first week can handle, the most forgiving of the five. Iceland and Portugal carry more swell than any of the five and weather that makes it uncertain. The thing to watch is not the forecast but the calendar: the warm three fill from about the twentieth and stay full into January.

Sorted by the coasts at their peak in December, then by verdict.

Country	December on that coast	Water	Peak season
Canary Islands	Excellent	20°	Peak
Morocco	Excellent	18°	Peak
Panama	Excellent	–	Peak
Spain	Excellent	14°	Peak
Sri Lanka	Excellent	28°	Peak
Costa Rica	Very good	28°	–
France	Very good	14°	–
Iceland	Very good	7°	–
Ireland	Very good	9°	–
Mexico	Very good	–	–
Portugal	Very good	15°	–
Senegal	Very good	24°	–
Wales	Very good	10°	–
Colombia	Good	27°	–
Mozambique	Good	27°	–
Nicaragua	Good	27°	–
South Africa	Good	20°	–

Verdicts are read from published surf guides and signed by us. Temperatures are monthly means published for one named break per country, not an average of a coastline. Swell height is left out on purpose: no source publishes it month by month for all of these coasts, and a figure measured one way here and modelled another way there would not compare.

Where to surf in December

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