Fuerteventura

El Cotillo's Piedra Playa is where the island learns: a wide-open, sand-bottomed beach break under golden cliffs at the west end of the North Track, with peaks for every stage of standing up. Summer keeps it waist-high and welcoming. Winter is another animal entirely, all rips and thumping shorebreak, and the lagoons north of the village become the family option while the beach does its heavy season.

The west coast's surf-camp capital, an hour south, where the island narrows to a few kilometers of desert between two seas of swell. The beach picks up everything, so there is nearly always a wave: soft and learner-shaped in summer, punchy and shifting in winter. The currents are the real syllabus here. Surf in front of the schools, ask where the rip is running today, and never trust yesterday's answer.

The fishing hamlet halfway along the North Track, a huddle of white houses around a tiny bay, is the friendliest door the north shore has. The right peels along the reef with more wall than teeth, longboarders trim it on small days, and the mood stays easy as long as you take your turn. It is still lava and urchins underneath: boots on, feet up over the inside.

The town reef on the edge of Corralejo, and the step most people take after graduating from the sandbars. A right that wraps over the rock in sections, long enough to practice actual surfing, with a left off the same peak when the swell has north in it. Crowded for the obvious reasons; dawn is the quiet shift, before the surf schools and the wind arrive together.

A short walk west of The Bubble, and for many the better wave: a long, fast left reeling off a flat lava slab, with a shorter right off the same peak. On a clean NW swell with a light southerly it is as good as lefts get in the Canaries, which is why the lineup holds every strong surfer on the island. Read the pecking order before you paddle for anything from the top of it.

The marquee wave of the North Track and the one on the posters: an A-frame that lurches out of deep water and folds over a shallow lava shelf, a short bowling right and a left that spits. It is a tube or nothing wave, ridden by a tight crew who have sat on that peak for decades and guard it. Watch a full set from the rocks, count the wipeouts, and be honest with yourself; Majanicho is ten minutes away.

The longest right in the Canaries wraps down the flank of a volcanic islet in a marine reserve off Corralejo. On a proper NW swell the sections join into rides of several hundred meters, legs burning before the wave ends. Getting there is the filter: the ferry plus a walk across the lava, or a boat shared with everyone else who read the forecast. Visits to the island are capped, so book the free permit before you count on it.

A short drive south of El Cotillo, then a path down the cliff to a sandy cove pinched between lava points. Esquinzo takes the same NW swell as the famous reefs and turns it into shifting beach-break peaks with rock at the edges, a size up from Piedra Playa and several crowds down. Bring everything you need: at the bottom of the cliff there is nothing but the wave.