The Conversations You Remember Are Usually the Simple Ones
Some conversations stay with you, not because someone said something incredibly smart or because there was some huge life lesson hidden inside them. Sometimes you simply sit next to someone at dinner after a surf session and, for whatever reason, the conversation feels easy.
There’s no pressure to be particularly funny or interesting. You talk a little, they listen, you ask something back, and before you really notice it happening, the person who was a complete stranger a few hours ago already feels a little less like one.
I think this is one of the nicest parts of a surf camp, especially for people who are traveling alone. Guests arrive in Fuerteventura from different countries with completely different lives back home, and somehow everyone ends up surfing together and sitting around the same table at the end of the day.
You don’t necessarily expect much from those first conversations, but they’re often the beginning of what makes the week memorable.
Good Communication Is Often About Understanding the Moment
I recently read Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg, and one idea from the book really stayed with me: not every conversation needs the same thing.
Sometimes somebody tells you about a problem because they genuinely want advice. Other times they already know what they’re going to do and simply want to talk about it. Sometimes they don’t want a solution at all. They just want somebody to understand why they’re frustrated.
Imagine someone comes back after a difficult surf session and tells you they had a terrible day. One person immediately starts explaining what they should do differently next time, another makes a joke, while somebody else simply says, “Yeah, that sounds rough.”
None of those responses are necessarily wrong. The important part is understanding which one actually fits the moment. Good communication isn’t always about having the cleverest response. A lot of the time, it’s simply about paying enough attention to understand what the other person needs from the conversation.
What Schulz von Thun Can Teach Us Without Making It Complicated
There’s also a well-known communication model by Friedemann Schulz von Thun that explains something similar. I don’t want to turn this into a communication theory lesson, but the basic idea is surprisingly useful in everyday life.
When somebody says something, there can be more behind the sentence than the actual words. If someone says, “It’s cold in here,” they might simply be making an observation. They might also be saying that they’re uncomfortable, hoping somebody closes the window or even feeling slightly annoyed that nobody else has noticed.
The person listening can interpret the exact same sentence differently. One person hears a simple fact, another hears a request, while somebody else might somehow hear criticism.
It sounds obvious when you write it down, but it explains a lot of everyday misunderstandings. People aren’t necessarily trying to be difficult. Sometimes two people simply hear completely different things in the same sentence.
Why This Matters When You Meet New People
This becomes especially noticeable when you put a group of people together who have only just met. Everyone is still figuring everyone else out. Who jokes about everything? Who needs a little longer to open up? Who enjoys deeper conversations? Who would rather keep things light for the first couple of days?
At a surf camp, you learn these things surprisingly quickly because you spend so much time around each other. You surf together, eat together, sit in the car on the way to the beach and see each other tired, hungry, excited, nervous and occasionally completely destroyed after a long session in the water.
It’s one of the reasons your first week surfing can become social much faster than people expect. You don’t really have to organise opportunities to get to know each other because they happen naturally throughout the day.
That also means a little awareness goes a long way. Sometimes the best thing you can add to a conversation isn’t another story or another question. Sometimes it’s simply listening properly.
A Surf Camp in Fuerteventura Creates the Right Kind of Space
One thing I like about the surf camp setup is that the environment already does a lot of the social work for you. You don’t have to spend your holiday walking into random bars hoping to meet someone or constantly thinking about how to start conversations with strangers.
There’s already a shared rhythm to the week. You see the same people at breakfast, head out for surf lessons together, come back to the villa, have dinner and end up doing things together in between. It’s a big part of what a surf camp actually is, and that shared everyday life often becomes just as important as the surfing itself.
The interesting thing is that the best conversations often happen outside the things that were actually planned. They happen while someone is making coffee, sitting around after dinner, driving back from the beach or waiting for everyone else to get ready.
Nobody has decided that this is the moment when the group is supposed to connect. People have simply spent enough time together that talking starts to feel normal.
The Best Conversations Don’t Feel Like Interviews
One thing I’ve learned from hosting people at Kyuka is that connection rarely comes from asking someone question after question. Even when the intention is good, it can quickly start feeling like an interview.
Good conversations have more of a rhythm. You ask something and actually listen to the answer. Maybe you react to it, share something from your own experience and then give the other person space to continue. It moves backwards and forwards without either person having to carry the whole conversation.
This is also why remembering someone’s name or something they told you the day before can make such a difference. It’s a small sign that you were actually paying attention rather than simply waiting for your turn to speak.
You don’t need the perfect story ready and you definitely don’t need to impress everyone sitting at the table. Most of the time, being genuinely present in the conversation does far more.
Small Things Make People Feel Comfortable
People notice small things more than we sometimes realise. They notice when you remember something they mentioned yesterday, when you ask how something turned out, when you let them finish a sentence or when you understand the feeling behind what they’re saying.
That matters in a surf camp because the experience isn’t only about waves, rooms, food and activities. A huge part of it is the atmosphere that develops between the people staying there.
It’s the feeling around the dinner table, the way somebody new gets brought into a conversation and the fact that quieter people can take their time without being pushed into becoming the loudest person in the room. Being the life of your surf camp friends group often has much less to do with being loud than people assume.
Those things are difficult to put on an itinerary, but they can completely change how a week feels.
You Don’t Need to Be a “Supercommunicator”
The word Supercommunicator makes the whole thing sound much more complicated than it needs to be. The biggest lesson I took from the book was actually very simple: pay a little more attention.
Listen to what somebody is saying, but also think about what they might be looking for from the conversation. Do they want your opinion? Do they want help solving something? Or do they just need somebody to listen for a minute?
You won’t always get it right, and that’s completely normal. Sometimes the easiest solution is simply to ask, “Do you want my opinion, or do you just want me to listen?”
It’s such a simple question, but it can prevent a conversation from going in completely the wrong direction.
Why This Is Part of the Kyuka Feeling
At Kyuka, this is something we care about, although it isn’t something we want to turn into a big concept that needs explaining every day. It’s more about the kind of atmosphere we try to create.
We want people to feel comfortable enough to join a conversation when they want to, but also comfortable enough to be quiet without somebody immediately assuming something is wrong. Conversations can be funny, random, deep, awkward or completely pointless. That’s what happens when a group of actual people spends a week together.
It’s also part of what makes a surf camp different from a normal holiday. You might arrive because you want to surf Fuerteventura, spend some time in the sun or simply do something different for a week. Then you move into the house, meet a group of people you’ve never seen before and slowly settle into the rhythm of living together.
Somewhere between the surf sessions, dinners, drives to the beach and conversations that weren’t planned, the people around you stop feeling quite so unfamiliar. By the end of the week, it can be strange to remember that only a few days earlier, you didn’t even know each other’s names.
