Praia Melão 82.5

#776 of 5756 surf spots in the world · 🇸🇹 São Tomé and Príncipe · São Tomé · near São Tomé

Works almost every day, no off season, boardshorts water.

Best time to surf Praia Melão

The best time to surf Praia Melão is April, May, July. The season runs Apr to Sep. In July the water sits around 25°C, so pack a rash vest or 2 mm, and the typical wave is 1.3 m. The nearest airport is TMS (9 km) and the nearest town is São Tomé (5 km).

What is under Praia Melão

Eight kilometres out along its swell window the sea floor is still shallow, 16 m. Alongside the bank the survey finds a channel, 23 m against 16 m, deep enough to bend swell onto one peak instead of spreading it along the beach.

Measured, not estimated: NOAA ETOPO 2022 global relief at 15 arc-seconds, about 460 m per cell, sampled along this spot’s own swell window. At that scale the survey sees passes and channels; it cannot see a reef ledge, so nothing here is said about how the wave breaks.

Why 82.5

Seven parts, each normalised 0 to 1 and multiplied by its weight; the sum is scaled so the best spot in the world scores 100. Wave quality and what the spot does on its best days carry more than half of it, which is what separates this from a ranking of where the water is warm.

The detail

Faces 80° with 58% open water around it. Friendly morning wind 72% of days. Mean peak period 11.6 s. Days over 3 m: 0%. On its best tenth of days it reaches 1.4 m, with a peak period of 14 s. Mellow days (0.4 to 1.2 m): 70%. Months that work: 12 of 12. Coordinates 0.300, 6.753 (OpenStreetMap).

What it costs to be here

Airport and town on the doorstep, so the local estimate is 15% above the country average. Estimate: World Bank PPP price level for São Tomé and Príncipe (2025, United States = 1.00) applied to a fixed surfer basket, then adjusted for how remote the spot is. Your own number moves with the season and how you live.

Spots nearby