Surfing
Beachbreaks aren't something you should travel for, unless they're in France and called Hossegor.
As a rule of thumb, I suggest not traveling for beachbreak. Chances are, you get plenty of chances to sift through sand bottomed peaks at home - so there’s no need to get on a plane to find another straight stretch of beach. I wouldn’t even suggest going to Puerto - partly for liability reasons, and partly due to the rather low percentage of makeable waves on offer. My advice? If you’re going to buy a ticket to go surf somewhere, “somewhere” sure as shit needs to peel off.
But I’ll make an exception for Hossegor. Come fall, once the summer crowds dim, the water cools, and the winds turn offshore, it’s still worth the flight. Not all beach breaks are created equal. Hossegor is an aristocratic, continental one-percenter - it pisses all over the vast majority of sand bottom spots world-wide. In this case, French arrogance is justified.
Recently, I lazily killed a few hours reading a Surfer Magazine from the early eighties. It included an update on Miki Dora, who at the time had fulfilled his obligation to the state (the kind that requires an orange jumpsuit) and relocated to France. The article described Dora surfing mindless Hossegor with fellow American turncoats Jeff Hakman and Tom Curren. Imagine that scene, and the stories those three shared between sets. The town must have been quaint and relatively condo-free at that point. The lineup not yet scattered with german snowboarders. The culture of Bordeaux, Biarritz and Bilbao a short drive away. Mundaka within striking distance. The sand hot, the girls topless, the wine as good and cheap as the cheese.
Go surf Hossegor, despite the changes. There’s always another bar to be found a bit farther north. If you time the tide right, you can share a peak with a few friends and pretend you’re Dora, Hakman, and Curren. Thing is, timing the tide ain’t easy. It rushes in faster than a doped-up cyclist in the Tour de France. A general rule of thumb: if you see barrels, you’re probably too late. On incoming tide, find a bar that looks too shallow and rippy, paddle out, and hope to hit the window. On outgoing, paddle out to that fat, barely capping sand point and watch it transform into dredging barrels. Have some faith. This isn’t Ponto or Long Beach. It’s Hossegor, for fuck’s sake: the Slater of beachbreaks.