Algarve

The west coast's classroom. Amado catches as much swell as Bordeira next door but organizes it better, peak after peak down a wide red-cliffed beach, with room for the surf schools at one end and proper banks at the other. It works on more tides and more winds than almost anywhere on this coast, which is exactly why the camper vans never leave. National contests run here for a reason.

The bay Sagres village actually lives on, facing due south with its back to the wind that ruins everyone else's day. Mareta needs a solid west or southwest swell to wrap in, and when it does you get soft, orderly peelers over sand and scattered rock, glassy while Tonel is capped white. This is where the schools go when the rest of the map is angry, and where you take your first green waves in February sunshine.

Four kilometers of town beach curving away from Lagos marina, and the south coast's storm gauge. Meia Praia is flat most of the year; it needs a big west swell or a proper southwest storm to break at all, and what arrives is slow, waist-high and kind, the sort of wave you can surf with a coffee waiting on the sand. When the whole west coast is closed out and even Sagres is heavy, this is where the longboards win.

A kilometer of empty sand where the Carrapateira river cuts through the dunes, and the wildest-feeling wave in this guide. Bordeira swallows every grain of west swell, the banks shift with the river every winter, and the walk across the dunes keeps the crowd to a handful. Currents are real and there is nobody to wave at, so treat it like the open Atlantic beach it is.

Down a winding road from Vila do Bispo, between cliffs of near-black schist that make the sand look borrowed from another planet. Castelejo is the swell magnet of the southwest corner: when Sagres is flat, the peaks here are usually still head-high and shoving. It punishes soft legs and empties fast when the north wind gets in. Cordoama, one cove north along the same wall of rock, is the pressure valve when the peak gets busy.

A crescent of dark cliff south of Aljezur that folds its arms around the swell. Arrifana takes the edge off both the wind and the size, which is why half the coast ends up in its car park when the open beaches are a mess. Friendly peaks in the middle for learners, and on a proper winter swell a long right point unloads off the rocks by the fishing harbor. Come early: the cliff road fills by nine.

The Sagres jewel, hidden at the bottom of a long staircase between the town and Cabo de São Vicente. Beliche takes a big west swell, bends it around the cape and folds it into wedging, sand-bottomed barrels while the cliff overhead kills the north wind dead. On the days it works it is the best wave in the Algarve, everyone within an hour knows it, and the takeoff zone fits about twelve people. Do the math before you paddle.

Sagres' workhorse, right under the walls of the fortress. Tonel faces just enough west to catch swell the south coast misses, so it breaks more days than anything else in town: shifty peaks, the odd hollow one against the rocks, and a lineup of surf camps mixed with locals who have surfed it barefoot in January. When it gets overhead the current drags hard toward the cape end. Check it first, always.