SeeCalifornia.com

While surfers’ favorite spots to catch waves are all over the board, National Geographic selected 10 best surfing destinations globally and chose two in California. You can probably guess one of them with minimal effort but the other, maybe not. Pictured above are Santa Cruz (left) and Encinitas (right).

1. SANTA CRUZ: While large California cities such as Los Angeles get more surfers by the numbers, Santa Cruz is consistently chosen as a favorite surf mecca worldwide. The stretch of coast not only has character (as part of the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary,) but so do the people who live in and visit the university town which touts a Banana slug for a mascot.  In addition to its quirkiness and few remaining nude beaches on the outskirts of the city, Santa Cruz is the birthplace of surfing in the USA. Though others are being added, it was christened as only one of 3 World Surfing Reserves in 2012. If you haven’t heard of Steamer Lane and Jack O’Neill, you’re overdue for a cruise to Cruz.

2. ENCINITAS: Unlike Santa Cruz, there’s no college in Encinitas but there is a campus of the Self Realization Fellowship which explains how one of the city’s famed surfing spots, Swami’s, got its name. National Geographic chose the city because “no SoCal town is quite as surfy as Encinitas.” From  La Paloma Theatre, which has an 84-year history of premiering surf films, to Moonlight Beach, Encinitas has character and charm, according to local Ed Lewis, a recognized shaper. He says that Encinitas “has everything you could ask for: culture, great food, spirituality, great surf spots, a long history of surfing, surfers and shapers–and the people are friendly and happy.”