Surf Camp or Bootcamp?

Our Thursday surf session started out fairly standard. Wake up, eat breakfast, get our gear ready, and head down to the beach. We didn’t start surfing right away because the tide wasn’t right, so we all played some beach volleyball, read, and just hung out. It was around 1-1:30 by the time we got suited up and in the water, but the waves were phenomenal. The surf has been insnanely messy all week with a super strong current that requires a ton of paddling and work to get outside the break. Thursday was amazing, though. The waves were really clean! Niko and I caught a super fun party wave. All smiles after that!

That night a big group of us (18 to be exact) went out for dinner at a restaurant near the camp. We were nearing the end of dinner when Egor, our Russian coach appeared, out of thin air, motioning for the intermediate group to have a little chat. He told us the forecast looked better early and that we should go around 6:30am, again. He reinforced the idea that the group was a democracy, but we’re all suck ups and told him it sounded great, despite the very apparent exhaustion written all over our faces.

It turned out that the surf wasn’t that great, but I ended on a really good note, catching a fun left hand to end the session. We napped and hung out at the camp the rest of the day before the big BBQ party night (picture up top-unfortunately, or fortunately, Niko was talking with our new Spanish friends when this somewhat cringey photo of everyone in their surf stance, was taken! We got super lucky with the group at the camp, though! There was a great mix of older, younger, families, single travelers, and couples at

the camp, as well as this group that was all around the same age as us). Niko and I tried our best to hang with all of the Euros as they danced and partied the night away, into the early hours of the morning (4am, to be exact) but we skipped out around 12:30 to get some much needed rest.

The next couple of days at the camp were pretty casual-we had a free surf day where we hung out at the beach and then the following day was our departure date. We exchanged numbers with all of our new friends and made our way to the bus station, to start the next leg of our adventure. We picked up an extra friend along the way, Aymen, who decided to come north with us, to a little town called Vila Nova de Milfontes.