Maceda Surf Hostel — Hotel in Ovar

I must unfortunately disagree with many of the good reviews writen here, many of which seem to be written by friends, not by clients.

The place is devided into a main house, where the owners live, a second construction for the kitchen and a store room and, situated in a big back garden: a couple of small separated cabins with private bedroom and bathroom.

We took the 3 day offer including surf course for two people in one of the private bedrooms. That is 630€ for 3 days.

Our experience started by the owner showing us our bedroom without any further explanations regarding the use of the kitchen, the organization of the breakfast (presumably accounted for in the 3 day offer) or any explanations regarding the non-functioning WiFi. He was always pretty busy attending friends and family which where constantly present at the place during our visit.

The breakfast consisted on literally a plastic bag full of bread left on the table and the remark that there was also some ham and cheese in the fridge.

The WiFi problem was solved after much insisting the owner.

Warm water works with butane cylinders, therefore it needs replacement every once in a while and you have to speak again with the owner.

The third and last night, the owners organized a barbecue party in the back garden. The pun is that the party was not meant for the guests, but for about 20 people consisting on the owners friends and family. - Imagine renting a bungalow and the owners making a party with loud music until late at night around the place where you are suppose to sleep.-

Overall the owners do seem friendly, but are unprofessional. 4-star hotel prices for low-end camping place.

Yeah, cool surf decoration and "nice vibes"...You reading this may think: "Dude relax, stop bit**ing and just enjoy surf, the nice weather and be easy going". Well, feel free to do it and get ripped off for the good vibes.

The surf lessons from Alex were good btw,...

We found the Surf Camp more or less by luck during our google search and decided to book our one week surf trip because of the nice pictures of the hostel, the garden and because of the good prices for rooms and the equipment.

We (4 guys) came by train from Porto. The Hostel is just like 6 minuites of walking from the railway station Carvalheira - Maceda away. Next to the railway station, is a little shop, were you can buy food, drinks and stuff. You can take the free to use hostel-bicycles to buy some stuff.

There is a shuttle service from the hostel to the beach in the Volkswagen, which was really nice to drive with. The surfinstructor Tomás drove us with the equipment to the beach, and gave us good tips during surfing to improve our skills. Some of us rented just a board with their own suits, some a board and a suit. In general, everybody of the hostel was very flexible for our individual rentals and wishes. E.g. in the evening we were quite exhausted of surfing and thought about, ordering pizzas. Tomas just called the next pizzeria for us. The hostel owner Joel, his wife, and Tomas joind, and we had a nice dinner with the group. (By the way, its possible to cook in the kitchen your own stuff)

After a few days of our residence, the stuff Isabel had her last day in the hostel, so the whole hostel had a farewell dinner at a nice restaurant in the next city. After the dinner we went to -Uncle Joe's bar- and had a funny night! ...next day, surfing started a bit later ;)

I never wrote such a long review... but we had such a good time, so see you next time again ;-)

I definitively recommend this surf school! Thx to Joel and to everybody from the...

Very passionate people. Whereas Loik and Rachel are the heart of the camp Andre represents the soul of this surfcamp.

The surf lessons are good that they are so long and you really get to understand what you should do and what you can do better in this short amount of time you have at Maceda.

I think some small things can be improved for example the surf skate introduction as an event can be put onto the saturday where there is less events in total.

Regarding the whole area itself this has to be discussed with Jean Diego if they can improve on that, because you can see that the material has experienced wear and should be replaced with something new (Wooden Planks under the Dinner table)

You can do many things there, slacklining, Yoga, Surfskate, Riding into the very nice sourrounding area with the bikes.

Maybe a nice idea for the website would be imparting the weekly plan so people can see what is done on Monday till Sunday.

Also an idea for the people there advise them to rent a car its very cheap (30 Euro a day for something like small suv)and some days you are knacked from the day before of surfing and a visit to porto or somewhere else is the right thing and...