If you have never been on a surf retreat, the brochure version tells you almost nothing useful. Ten sessions, a villa, some yoga. That could mean anything.
So here is the honest version of what a week actually looks like on one of our retreats in El Salvador, hour by hour, including the parts nobody puts in the photos.
Before you arrive
You fly into San Salvador (SAL). It is about a 45-minute drive to the coast, and on a retreat week that transfer is included, so somebody is waiting for you with your name on a phone screen rather than you negotiating with a taxi at midnight in a country you have never been to.
Most guests arrive the day before the retreat starts. That is deliberate. Nobody surfs well on no sleep after a long-haul flight, and the first evening is for eating, meeting the other three women and sleeping.
Four guests is the maximum. That number is not a marketing choice, it is a coaching one. Two students per coach in the water is the point at which someone can actually watch you and tell you what your back foot is doing.
Day one: finding out where you actually are
The first surf is usually around sunrise, because the wind comes up on this coast in the early afternoon and the morning is when the water is glassy.
The first session is not really about catching waves. It is an assessment, even if it does not feel like one. Pixie watches how you paddle, how you pop up, whether you look where you are going or at your feet, and how you behave when a set comes through. Everything after that is built on what she sees in the first ninety minutes.
Before that, there is a beach briefing that beginners tend to skip mentally and then remember later: how to read a rip, where to enter and exit, what the cobblestone bottom means for your feet, and what the etiquette is so you do not drop in on someone and start your holiday badly.
Afternoon is free. Most people sleep. Surfing uses muscles you have not used before, and the tiredness on day one surprises almost everyone.
Day two: the part where it gets frustrating
This is the day worth warning you about, because it is the day people quietly decide they are bad at surfing.
On day one adrenaline carries you. On day two your arms hurt, your ribs are bruised from the board, and the thing you did once yesterday will not happen again. This is completely normal and it happens to nearly everyone. Knowing it is coming helps more than you would think.
Two sessions again, morning and late afternoon once the wind drops. Between them, this is usually when the video comes out.
Photo and video analysis
Two of the week’s sessions are filmed. Afterwards everyone sits down together and watches.
It is uncomfortable for about four minutes and then it becomes the most useful thing in the week. Almost nobody’s mental picture of their own surfing matches the footage. People who are certain they are standing up too far back discover they are standing too far forward. People who think they are looking down the line find out they are staring at the nose of the board.
You keep the footage. Several guests have told us they still refer to it a year later.
Midweek: the massage, and why it is timed where it is
Around the middle of the week Sandra and her crew come to the villa. They have ten years of massage experience between them and they know exactly what a week of paddling does to a set of shoulders.
This is not a spa add-on for the sake of the itinerary. By day three or four the muscles down the side of your ribs and across your upper back are genuinely done, and whether you surf well for the back half of the week depends a lot on whether that gets sorted out.
Days three to five: where the progress actually happens
By the middle of the week the group has usually split in terms of what each person is working on, which is where a small group earns its keep.
One woman is working on catching unbroken waves without a push. Another is working on angling her take-off rather than going straight. Another is trying to make a bottom turn happen instead of just surviving the drop. In a class of twelve you would all get the same instruction. Here you do not.
The break changes depending on conditions. Pixie checks the swell, the tide and the wind each morning and picks the spot that suits the group that day, rather than driving to the same beach out of habit. Some mornings that is Palmarcito right outside the villa. Some days it is Sunzal fifteen minutes up the coast, where the wave is long and forgiving and you can ride it for what feels like forever.
The non-surfing half
Two surfs a day sounds like a lot until you realise it is roughly four hours of the day, and you are awake for sixteen.
There is yoga at the villa with Katrin, who trained in India and has lived here for ten years. The sessions are mostly vinyasa and yin, and they are scheduled around the surf rather than competing with it.
One day usually includes the Tamanique waterfalls: a hike through the jungle down to cascading pools where you can jump from the rocks or just float. It is the single most photographed thing anyone does on these weeks.
The rest is unstructured. Hammocks, the pool, the beach, a book, a nap. There is no schedule you have to keep up with, and there is no pressure to be sociable every hour of the day if you would rather be quiet.
The food
The first surf normally happens around sunrise, so the day starts with something quick: a banana, an apple or whatever you want to grab from the fridge, and freshly made coffee at the villa.
After surf number one we have breakfast at Rosa’s, a Salvadoran restaurant on the beach. Get a fresh fruit juice and a típico, the hearty traditional breakfast of eggs, beans, avocado, tortillas, traditional cheese and fried plantains.
At dinner we take you to different restaurants along the coastline, some Salvadoran owned and some internationally owned. Italian, Thai, sushi, French and everything in between, from smash burgers to heavenly falafel wraps. Give us your dietary preferences before you arrive and we will make sure you get a delicious variety of good food that brings you joy and fuels your body.
The last day
By the final session most people are surfing noticeably better than they were on Monday, and the more interesting change is that they are reading the ocean differently. They are looking at the horizon instead of at the wave in front of them. They are picking their own waves instead of being told which one to go for.
You are also understanding, and possibly completing, your next maneuvers: your bottom turn, your top turn, generating speed on the wave. How far you get depends on your own development and on what you could already do when you arrived. Some people will just be starting on the first one, the bottom turn, and that is fine. It is different for every student. The main thing is that you leave the week knowing how to do your next maneuver, and then you go out into the world and keep trying it.
Surfing is a step-by-step process. If by the last day you have learned or mastered one or two steps, and you have the knowledge to fine-tune them later, you will be stoked.
That is really what you are taking home. The skill fades a bit if you do not surf for six months. The understanding does not.
What nobody tells you
You will be tired in a way you did not expect. Not just physically. Concentrating in the ocean for two sessions a day is mentally demanding.
You will swallow seawater. Everyone does.
The group matters more than you think. Four women who have never met, all slightly out of their depth, all failing in front of each other repeatedly, tends to produce friendships faster than almost any other setting. A surprising number of guests come back with someone they met on a previous week.
You do not need to be surf fit. You need to be able to swim. Everything else is technique, and technique is what the week is for.
A lot of guests don’t have surf where they live, and that is fine. To get the most out of your week, though, it helps to get ready in the weeks before you come. If surfing isn’t an option, get to a swimming pool and put in some front crawl lengths to build your paddle power. Any type of yoga will help your flexibility, and a sun salutation is practically a pop-up. Have a look at the four versions of a pop-up on Pixie’s Instagram, see which one works for you and test it out on the mat. The more you master your pop-up on land, the less you need to think about it in the water, and the more time you have to work on everything else. Anything you can do to get your body moving and your muscles ready will help you get more out of the week.
Who this is not for
Being straight about it: if you want a party week, this is not it. If you want a big group where you can hide at the back, this is not it either, because with four guests there is no back.
And if you don’t really love surfing, or don’t really want to progress, it is probably not for you. A lot of retreats are a little bit of surf and then yoga and everything else. These retreats are surf focused. Pixie is going to push you to improve your skills, and you get almost double the number of sessions most surf retreats offer. You can of course sit out a session if you are tired, it’s not the military, but you come here to leave a better surfer. Pixie is a professional coach, and she will give you the confidence to handle yourself in the ocean when you get back home.
Ready to see the dates?
Retreat weeks run in small groups throughout the year, with beginner and progression options depending on where you are with your surfing. Have a look at the retreats, or read about the breaks we surf.
If you want to ask something first, message Pixie on WhatsApp at +503 6074 9154. She answers herself.
