How we pick the schools, the lodging and the photos
This site names real businesses and uses other people's photographs. Here is where every data point comes from, what we filter, and what we deliberately do not do.
A site telling someone where to spend a few thousand euros owes them an explanation of where its claims come from. This post exists for that, and to put on record what we do and do not do.
The schools, lodging and restaurants
The lists on each destination page are not hand-written. They come from public Google Maps reviews, queried against the coordinates of each spot.
The filters:
- rating of 4.3 or above;
- at least 8 reviews — below that a rating means nothing;
- sorted by rating weighted by review volume, so a 5.0 with nine reviews does not outrank a 4.9 with two hundred;
- schools must show explicit kite or wing signal in the name or category, so surf schools do not get mixed in.
The collection date sits under every list. Ratings change, and an undated list ages while pretending it hasn’t.
We take no commission from any business listed. There are no affiliate links in the lists and nobody pays to appear.
Worth recording what this replaced: an earlier version of this site listed schools and guesthouses that simply did not exist, with invented ratings. All of it was removed. A guide that invents a business name has no standing to be believed about anything else.
The comparison figures
The table comparing all ten destinations shows how many well-reviewed schools, places to stay and restaurants each location has. It is the most honest proxy for “infrastructure” we can measure without editorialising.
The limitation is stated there: these are the first 20 Maps results per category per destination. Useful for comparing order of magnitude between places — Cumbuco has far more infrastructure than Atins — not as a census.
The photographs
All of them come from Wikimedia Commons, under verified free licences. The search ran by coordinate and by place name, and every candidate was looked at before selection — this is not the first hit of an automated query.
Each photo carries author, licence and link. CC BY and CC BY-SA require visible credit, a link to the licence and an indication that the work was modified — ours were resized. That is why the credit sits under the image: it is a condition of use, not decoration.
No image on this site is AI-generated. A generated beach presented as Cumbuco is the same problem as the invented school, in a different format.
The wind forecast
Data comes from Open-Meteo weather models, in knots, with tide from the same service’s marine API. There is no proprietary model here, and each spot page says so.
The direction arrow points where the wind is going, following the Windguru convention — not where it comes from, which is how the raw data arrives from the model.
What is not resolved yet
Two things, said here before anyone has to ask:
The logistics and season content for each spot needs local review. It was written from what is well established about each place, but not every detail has been checked with someone who rides there every season. Where it is wrong, we want to know.
The lists are a snapshot, not monitoring. They do not refresh themselves. Until there is an update routine, the date under each list is the most important thing on it.
Frequently asked
Do you take commission from the schools and lodging listed?
No. No business on this site pays to appear, and there are no affiliate links in the lists. Order is set by rating and review volume on Google Maps, not by any commercial arrangement.
How do I correct information about my business?
The lists are rebuilt from Google Maps. If the information is wrong there, fixing your Google profile resolves it at the next refresh. For errors in the editorial content of the guides, contact details are in the footer.