Guide to plan your surf trip

1. Find & Connect With NEW SURF BUDDIEs

Sharing costs with a surf buddy will reduce your expenses a lot. You can halve costs for accommodation, guides, transport and more. So find a surf buddy. If your friends are busy simply search our upcoming trips or share your own trip so others can join.

After you have registered in our community you can contact other surfers who you wanna travel with. It’s always important to share your ideas, interests and expectations of the trip. So you know what to expect and if a trip together would work out. Meanwhile you can look for accommodations that suit good for both of you and you get to know each other already a bit better.

Fix the dates with your surf buddy if you decide to book an accommodation together. It doesn’t matter if you don’t stay the exact same dates. If you arrive or leave a few days before or after just book a private place for this time. 

2. Tips to book your flight

Search your flight with flexible date options to find cheap flight tickets. Therefor we recommend using Kayak with the +/- 3 days option or Skyscanner where you can compare prices for the whole month.

Check flights to the capital city or bigger cities around your destinations even if there is an international airport at your final destination. Often not all the inland flights are shown on the flight search platforms, so they simply don’t show all the options you actually have. You get cheaper flight to bigger cities. The connecting flight you can book afterwards easily with a cheap inland airlines.

There are several airline who offer free sport equipment for example:

• KLM (Netherlands)
• Emirates (free with Weight Concept if you stay in the max. weight limit of your luggage allowance between 25 to 35 kg depending on the fare)
• Virgin (Europe)
• Qantas (Australia)
• South Africa
• Air New Zealand
• Singapore

3. Visa

For many countries you need to show a return ticket to get a Visa. If you want to keep your trip flexible there are platforms that generate real tickets with flight reservations like:

• Onward Ticket
• Onewayfly

4. Book your Accommodation

Book your hotel, villa or bungalow via booking.com with free cancelation or any other platform that offers free cancelation. We highly recommend you to book with free cancelation so you stay flexible to include more people later. If more people will contact you to join the trip you can integrate them later and change to a bigger location. That’s important because if you find more people you can probably afford a better place (maybe a private villa) for almost the same price. 

Before booking check the ratings. I usually never book a place under a rating of 8.0 (booking) or 4.0 stars (google). Also check how many ratings the hotel has. If its just a few and the place is obviously not new. Don’t book it. They probably just changed the account to hide old ratings.

After the booking directly contact your accommodation and ask for airport transport. Usually most of the places offer transport for a small fee or if you are lucky free of charge. You can also just hop in a cap of course after arrival, but for pre-booked shuttles – directly with a local – you probably get a better deal.

5. Surf lessons and equipment

In every surf town you can find shops with board rentals. Consider good if it’s really necessary to bring your own board. The price for the luggage plus insurance (or taking the risk for damages) is often more expensive than just borrow one. At the board rental you can also ask if the know a local surf instructor or search an instructor over our platform. Try to make a deal for the whole time of your stay to get a good price (equipment, instructor, transport).  If you book an instructor they will usually also organize your transport. 

You can search a photographer over our platform.

6. Surfspots

If you surf by yourself. Make good research about the best surf spots for your level. Usually you find basic informations about surf spots in the internet. Also in the some forecast apps like Surfline and surf-forcast.com they provide guides for well known spots. After choosing the spot change the rider to Guide.

Also ask locals to get further informations at the place about the channel, currents and other risks. Before entering a spot also watch it for at least 10 minutes to get an impression of the bigger sets coming in.

But always if you’re in doubt: Take an instructor!