Continuing to add new retreat locations to our offerings, this is a highlight video of our first ever Surf With Amigas Retreat in Morocco. The ladies scored really fun user-friendly waves at a long right point break and explored Moroccan culture.
At these retreats our goal will be to help you develop the skills needed to get your first tube ride. We’ll be getting up early and paddling out at sunrise, then coming in for breakfast, and paddling out again! If the tide and wind are good, we’ll surf four or five hours per day. This retreat is about surfing our brains out!
We hosted an advanced shortboard retreat in North Nicaragua with the goal of teaching our guests how to get tubed. You will see a couple of long boarders as well who wanted to come and join in the fun without the pressure of getting tubed. This is the highlight video of the week with everyone included!
There are waves for everyone in North Nicaragua and we scored an awesome swell and conditions all week. So much fun! Be sure to watch til the end to enjoy the hilarious wipeout reel!
If you’ve been on one of our retreats in Southern Costa Rica, you’ll recognize these awesome ladies as the ones who make your delicious meals, greet you with a smile at cocktail hour, and keep your room tidy. After watching all our awesome guests with big smiles on their faces after a great surf session, these ladies wanted to try it for themselves. We took them down to the beach and did a surf lesson as if they were guests, complete with a pre-session stretch and post-session video analysis. They loved it! It felt so good to share the stoke of surfing with our entire team.
At Surf With Amigas, we are always looking for constructive ways to engage with the communities where we host retreats. Whether it’s funding sea turtle conservation, donating school books to indigenous children, giving scholarships for higher education, or encouraging women to participate in sports by sponsoring a local ladies kickball team, we feel good about giving back wherever we are.
In this case, we have become friends with an amazingly inspiring woman named Hadas, who owns a vegetarian cafe and surf view cabanas as her day job, and offers art classes to kids and adults to feed her passion for art. She runs an open art studio called De Colores in Pavones, Costa Rica.
We are so happy to donate funds to support free art classes for local children to explore and express themselves through color, textures, and the allowance to get messy! Here are a few photos from a recent class.
By supporting us, you are supporting her, and thereby supporting them. Thank you!
We didn’t sleep that first night. The ground shook from the power of the crashing waves and when we finally walked down to the beach at first light, the bay was stacked to the horizon with perfect lines. We counted seven waves, each an identical copy of the previous, peeling perfectly along the point. A crew of older guys approached.
G-Land, off the coast of Java, was our promised land. There were three of us with our spirits synchronized and ready to venture to somewhere new: the exotic Delia Bense-Kang, part Mexican, Korean, and German, who’d grown up surfing the rough seas of Northern California and now works for the Surfrider Foundation. Then there was the gorgeous Silvia Yom, a well-traveled and talented filmmaker and photographer from Los Angeles. And myself, Alex Kelly, known as the fiery Spaniard, who, having finished my degree in Oceanography, started a surf school in southern Spain. We’d all connected by working for Surf With Amigas,an agency dedicated to inspire women in surfing and life through surf and yoga retreats.
As we boarded the fast boat full of dudes we could tell that it was a rare occurrence to see three single girls going to G-Land. Everyone was filled with anticipation, nerves, and hopes of scoring the waves of their lives. Picture perfect hollow barrels – big, long, and fast– with magical conditions were rumored for the next few days. The history and the vibe of transient surfers passing through to ride this dreamy barrel was palpable and the proof lay in a smattering of surf posters on the walls and broken boards strewn around.
In the morning the tide was too low to surf so everyone gathered to watch while sipping their coffee. Conversations consisted of contemplating what board to ride, best entry and exit strategy, where to sit. We did our best to eavesdrop and gather knowledge to build our plan of attack.
Excited but terrified, we eventually made it out…without actually realizing how big it was. With our eyes always set on the horizon we scratched over the top of the first set. There were a few older guys just charging and getting great rides. They didn’t look like they were in good shape but they were ripping. I felt so inspired by them. I was sitting the farthest out because I didn’t want to get worked on the inside and before I knew it, the horizon turned dark, signaling a huge set on the way.
For an instant, everything slowed down and every action and movement followed the previous one. I felt the lift and wind in my face as I cruised all the way down to the bottom of the wave. It started to suck up as it hit the reef and I tried to set my rail and get high to pass the section but it was too late and I wasn’t making it. I could feel the wave collapsing behind me so I straightened out to get as far away as I could from the lip. Then I waited to get hit by the avalanche of whitewater behind me. It slammed me down hard on the reef, but luckily butt first, and it bounced me right back up again. I grabbed the board and paddled back out for more. I caught another one right off the bat that aligned itself beautifully all the way into the channel.
As I paddled back out again I looked toward the lineup and saw a big one coming through. Everyone was eyeing it hungrily as one of the guys took off and ended up flying over the falls. Delia happened to be next in line and I yelled at her, “Send it!” She took off super late, made the drop, and disappeared into the barrel.
It all came together that day and we felt in tune with the ocean, catching one wave after another. The offshore wind was blowing into crystal-clear blue water, creating a wave you could only imagine in your wettest of surf dreams. Our friend Silvia was on the boat right in the lineup cheering and shooting the most epic surf shots. After a few days, we’d earned our places in the lineup and felt right at home with the crew at Bobby’s surf camp. And as all swell cycles come and go, so do these momentous life experiences. The trip confirmed our beliefs in taking life as it comes, to be open to whatever the world has to offer and live for what makes you feel alive and present. If you feel it, just send it.
Photos by Silvia Yom
We just wrapped up our very first beginner surf retreat of the season in Northern Costa Rica. While some of the ladies who attended did have prior surfing experience, we also had a handful who had never surfed before. This sand bottom bay is the perfect spot for learning to stand up for the very first time. It’s also a great spot to refine existing skills.
We had some incredible dancers join us this week. They were busting a move on the beach, during late night dance parties in the yoga studio, and on their surfboards. Watch the video to see all the moves.
Pam LeBlanc is a journalist for the Austin Statesman. She joined us on a retreat this past summer to learn to surf and wrote about her experience. An excerpt from her exciting story is below, along with a link to the full article. Enjoy!
On the last day of surf camp, we head across the muddy gravel road in front of our cabins to a stretch of beach where the waves break big.
There, the ocean curls over into industrial-size rolls of carpet, crashing in rapid-fire explosions of greenish-gray spray. The roar drowns out the squawking of the scarlet macaws, and I can’t draw my eyes away. Those waves look huge to me, much bigger than the “cute” ones we’ve been practicing on all week, even though I know that for seasoned surfers they’d present no problem.
Surfboards in tow, 10 other women and I stare out to sea. Then we wade into the surf. We dash out, a few at a time, between the biggest sets, springing onto our boards and paddling furiously, jumping off and “turtling” them overhead to get through bigger waves.
It takes 30 minutes for all of us to work our way safely past the break. Then we sit up, watching intently for just the right set.
After a week of practice, now comes the test……
Before the first ocean session at all-women’s Surf With Amigas camp in southern Costa Rica, we gathered beneath a covered pavilion for some dry land briefings. We learned the parts of a surfboard, the basics about wave formation and how to get up on a surfboard. Instructors broke the pop-up technique into steps, and we practiced on yoga mats.
Then we headed to the beach in a van loaded with colorful boards, music pulsing out the windows. For the next five days, our group broke into two — beginners like me and more experienced paddlers. We visited two nearby beaches, and one day rode a boat to catch a wave off the Osa Peninsula. We paddled into swell after swell, missing some and catching others.
Gradually, things got easier. I grew comfortable hopping onto the board and easing myself into the standing position. I didn’t always get it, and fell off pretty quickly when I did, but I swooned every time I felt that sweet push when I caught a wave just right. After a few days, I could turn down the line, riding a small wave as it broke toward shore. The other campers and I cheered each accomplishment, and at the end of every session we snacked on fresh watermelon and pineapple.
Then we headed back to our cabins, no-frills, cement-floored shelters without air conditioning or hot water but with plenty of charm.
Sure, we all went nuts when a local woman stopped by to paint toucans and palm trees on our fingernails, we descended like vultures when organizers pulled out an array of teeny-weeny bikinis available for purchase, and we staged the greatest slumber party of all time one night when we made chocolate from scratch, sipped wine and braided each other’s hair.
But make no mistake: This was no frivolous get-together. We came to surf.
To read more, click the link below for the full article:
http://specials.mystatesman.com/surf-camp/
In July we hosted an advanced retreat in Southern Costa Rica. The advanced retreats are open to ladies that do have a solid amount of prior surf experience and are working on more complex turns, style, and higher level skills. This particular week we were a bit unlucky with swell. The waves were on the smaller side, but as you can see, it’s never flat and we still had plenty of surf to work with. The guests got video coaching with former pro surfer Holly Beck and participated in classroom sessions on style, how to read a surf forecast and the differences between surfboards.
At Surf With Amigas we typically focus on value accommodations and go big on service in order to keep the price affordable. This one week we are offering a more luxurious accommodation option but still the awesome service you expect from us.
We’ll stay at a gorgeous house just 200m from the beach, but up a steep hill creating dramatic views. The house features 4 rooms to be split by 2-3 guests, each with it’s own private bathroom, AC, hot water, and high speed fiber optic WiFi. There’s a comfortable living room with big screen tv where we’ll do our surf coaching and classroom sessions, a relaxing pool and brand new yoga deck. The food will be catered by a local chef.
This region of Costa Rica is regarded as one of the most biologically diverse places in the world. Expect to see monkeys, sloths, toucans, scarlet macaws and a variety of other local creatures! There’s an option to ride horses deep into the jungle to check out a Native Indian reserve, do a boat trip to surf (conditions permitting), and we’ll have a ladies night out on the town. We’ll even learn to make chocolate and support the indigenous community by shopping their locally made products. We’ll relax and reconnect with nature.
We will be driving to surf but there are several spots just a short way down the road, and relaxing on the pool deck, enjoying the view after the session will make hopping in the car to surf more than worth it. There’s a fun wave a short drive to the South featuring mostly lefts but a few rights too, a few gentler waves down the beach, and a couple world class point breaks nearby. We’ll be on a surf safari to get you into the best waves possible.
If the swell is bigger we’ll be on a mission by boat or car to surf some of the longest waves in the world. We also like to explore some hidden nooks and crannies that are also super fun and often empty. We typically break up the group by ability so that everyone gets what they’re looking for and we don’t show up anywhere with a big crowd!
Price: Starting at $1950
What’s Included:
Optional Extras:
To book your flight, first fly into San Jose, Costa Rica (SJO), then connect to a domestic flight to Golfito. I recommend looking at the possible international options but then actually booking your Golfito flight before booking your international flight. I was told by an Amiga who has already booked hers that it looked like all the flights shown below on the schedule were available until she actually tried to book one of them. So book the smaller flight first just to be sure!
There are several flights per day into Golfito – an early morning, a midday, and a later afternoon flight. Our shuttle will pick you up on the midday or afternoon flight only since the hotel does not allow check in before noon. For the way out, choose the early or midday flight to take advantage of our shuttle.
For the flight from San Jose to Golfito, you need to book with Sansa Air directly – you can’t use Expedia. For questions on booking flights or other options if you can’t find an itinerary that works for you, send us an email!
