Diving - The adventure continues!

Diving in Lanzarote 2016

Lauren had learnt to dive in Mauritius in 2013, but had never dived since (an attempt on our holiday to Malta in 2015 was stymied by her treading on a Sea Urchin on our first day there!).

However, she remained keen and, finally out of further education, she suggested we take a short break to Lanzarote for a few days' diving. I wasn't super keen as I'd only been there the previous year, but you can't really argue with the combination of warm weather (and water) and keen pricing, so we decided to have a few days in mid October.

As I'd had a good experience with Safari Divers the previous year, we booked again with them, for 3 day's diving.

We flew, with Monarch on a fairly basic, but perfectly acceptable flight for the low price (around £150 each) and arrived in Arrecife at around 9:30PM on a Thursday. We took a taxi to Puerto Del Carmen (16 euros, it's not far) and were soon ensconced in our home for the week, a duplex apartment in the Guanarama complex, which is a row of two floor apartments near the Playa Chica and part of the Costa Volcan hotel, where we checked in and on departure, out.

We slept pretty well, even though there was no aircon (the bedrooms are downstairs, so stay a little cooler) and we went down to Safari's beachfront dive centre in time for my 9:30 start.

The morning dives are deeper (to around 30M), so Lauren's first dive (as only an Open Water diver) had to wait until the afternoon.

The first dive I undertook was to the Red Coral.

We started off gently, swimming down past the abandoned rowing boat and the Dusky Grouper who always seems to be around here. We swam down and around to the Red Coral (which I photographed last year, so didn't bother with that much this time) and then started to ascend up across the sandy area above the drop off.

Suddenly our guide, Diana, pointed up and there, cruising by, was a huge shoal (at least 50 - I have over 30 in one photo and it shows nowhere near all of them) of large Barracuda. I'd never seen more than 2 or 3 together, so already this trip was offering totally new experiences.

Barracuda are quite nice to see in small numbers, but this shoal was pretty special!

Towards the end of the dive, back in the shelter of the volcanic rock horseshoe that protects Playa Chica, those of us with air left were left to explore and my buddy and I came across two Cuttlefish pulsing and changing colour when challenged by a fish.

In the afternoon, I went off on a boat to Punta Tinosa. Someone grumbled about it being "that place with nothing but rocks", but I recalled it for sightings of rays from my last visit and so it proved again.

We dropped down to the rocks and swam between them and sandy expanses between them, passing a largish, very broken, wreck below us and then spotted a Ray of some type swimming in open water.

A little while later we came across another, hiding in the sand on the bottom and, as I started to swim away from this one, I spotted a huge ray below me. I tried to attract the attention of the other divers, but no-one noticed, but as I started to turn back from following it for a short while to get some photos I spotted our guide pointing at it disappearing. She'd spotted me swimming off at an angle and wondered why. A few of the others spotted it, but I think I was closest, even though it was still some way beneath me.

We then saw another smaller Ray before the dive ended. A good first day's diving!

Lauren, meanwhile, was taken out in the shallow bay in front of Playa Chica, but as her buoyancy was fine, ventured out a little further, spotting both an Angel Shark (I'd not seen one on my dives or the previous year!) and seahorses, so she was pretty happy. Some concern about her ears beforehand also proved to be a false alarm as she had no issues.

We ventured up to the restaurants above the PDC harbour and ate a lovely meal in the Dolce Vita restaurant, enjoying the lovely sunset over Fuerteventura and the volcanic south of Lanzarote.

Next morning we were both diving, so we headed out.

I headed off to the 'Blue Hole'. This sounds very exciting and it's fairly picturesque, but it's not exactly thrilling as it's just a short swim through some rocks descending from 20ish to 30m.

We jumped in from the side of the jetty and headed along the shallows (c. 5-8m) along the sea wall passing Nudibranchs, garden eels and many small reef fish.

We then crossed over a sandy area, with hundreds of Garden Eels again, over the drop off and down to 30M or so. As we moved along the wall towards the 'Blue Hole', we spotted a couple of Grouper, one very large and the other a decent size.

Mauro, our guide on this trip, proposed we swim UP through the Blue Hole, which is probably a better direction photogenically, at least!

After that we swam to the metal structure that often homes Seahorses and indeed found one on it and another couple on some rope leading away from it.

As the dive came to an end, I got my wish as Mauro put his hand side on to his head in the universally recognised sign (for divers anyway) of a Shark! Sure enough, partially concealed in the sand was a large (Mauro said, I had a sample of one to judge by!) Angel Shark (around 2M I'd say). This was proving a more exciting trip than I'd expected as, despite diving familiar sites, we were seeing a lot more variety of life than I'd seen the previous year.

Lauren's dive was similar, as she'd also jumped in from the jetty wall, but stuck to the shallower areas near the wall and above the drop off. She was happy, too, as she'd seen a Barracuda and an Octopus on her dive.

After lunching back in our apartment, we both joined the Saturday boat dive to the old wrecks. Again, Lauren joined an OW group staying about 18m, whilst my group went deeper to see some of the deeper wrecks. The wrecks here are a bit of a mess really, with boats piled on each other and many of them down at 40 or so metres.

Also, oddly, they don't seem to attract much life, unlike wrecks in the UK or many other places, so they're not really that interesting to visit. The best wreck, in my view, is the shallowest, which was good for exploring and for Lauren as she was able to reach it too.

On our safety stops we both spotted Stingray. The one I saw was quite small, but Lauren saw a couple, including a large one with no tail, which I'd seen the previous year and is quite well known in the area as 'Stumpy'! Good to know he was still around and Lauren was excited to have added Rays to her list of 'seen its'. Indeed it was successful trip for fish spotting and I definitely saw more on this trip than I had the previous year within days of the same date!

Dinner on Saturday was in the Zafran Indian restaurant. Again, it was somewhere I'd been the previous year and recalled the food being excellent and it was no surprise to find it was equally good on this trip. Certainly one of the best Indian restaurants I've visited outside the UK (I've not been to the Indian subcontinent of course).

On Sunday, there's no boat dive, so we had a couple of shore entry dives planned.

My first one was down to the large cave known as the Cathedral. We swam down the drop off and very quickly reached the entrance (we must have taken a different route the previous year as it seemed to take much longer). Inside we found a very large Dusky Grouper, which swam out along the overhanging rocks for a while as we exited.

As this was down at 30M, we swam up pretty much straightaway after this as NDL was being reached quickly (I think I heard a couple say they'd actually incurred some Deco time at this point, but the nature of the diving here means you can burn any off exploring in the fish filled shallows).

We spotted an Octopus in a rocky outcrop and spent the last 10 minutes or so exploring the shallows in Playa Chica as we had plenty of air left.

Lauren, meanwhile stayed shallower, but again enjoyed her dive.

In the afternoon, we all stayed relatively shallow in a group of mixed qualification divers, but it was good as the light was excellent and we swam through the cave/tunnel, the entrance to which I'd been looking at when caught in an upsurge and dumped onto the rocks above the previous year! This year the current was much calmer.

We also spotted a couple (The couple?) of cuttlefish on this dive, one extending its tentacles and pulsing different colours in warning to us if we got too close.

I had plent of air and could have spent a full hour (and more) exploring the rocks around the edge of Playa Chica, but my buddy, a German called Elmer, was getting cold, so we called it a day at 57 minutes.

After that dive we had a chat with the people at Safari and decided that we'd have enough time after that evening's night dive to desaturate fully before flying the following night.

So, after a quick early dinner, we were back at the dive centre to kit up for the night dive.

Lauren was a little apprehensive at first, but soon started to enjoy it. Unfortunately, we dived with a large group of French speaking divers and they were, frankly, terrible!

We spent a lot of time in just 2-4M and, whilst I had to indicate to Lauren to come down a bit a couple of times, lots of the others were crawling along the seabed or bobbing on the surface. They repeatedly swam into us, in desperation to get to the front of the queue and see whatever the guide, Debora, found first!

I enjoyed the previous year's night dive much more because of this, but we still spotted a young Angel Shark, a Stonefish, Sea Cucumbers galore, Box Fish sleeping (many on their sides, which had amused me greatly the year before - I didn't realise fish slept like that!) and many of the other smaller fish we'd seen throughout the day.

We didn't see any Seahorses on this dive, but finished, as the previous year, with our torches off to see the green phosphorescence sparking from our fingers as we waved them around. It wasn't as impressive as the previous year, but it was there and so Lauren got to see it and by the time we got out she was excited and happy about her night dive experience, which had, after all, only been her 10th dive!

As the previous year, our experiences with Safari Diving had been enjoyable and painless from beginning to end. If there's a minor quibble it's that they only dive from Playa Chica normally, but as many other dive centres bus people in there, it's clearly a popular location to dive from.

After saying our goodbyes and getting our logbooks stamped, we sat and chatted on our balcony for a while before going to sleep.

After breakfast, we quickly washed and tidied up and then went over to the Costa Volcan and checked out. We then grabbed a delicious ice-cream at the nearby cafe (I think we'd provided them good business - Lauren had 3 in one day on the first day!) and then went into town to catch a bus tour of the North of the Island.

The weather was quite overcast, so a bus trip seemed just the thing and I'd booked again with the delightful Italian lady in the bike rental shop who I'd booked a trip with the previous year. This year, though, the bus DID pick us up and so we had the trip.

We visited a number of sites, most of which I'd never have thought of going to, but all interesting in their way.

First up was the Farmer's House museum, created by César Manrique. This was an attractive an interesting mix of sculpture, architecture and living museum historical site, with a vast underground restaurant. Lauren joked she'd like to have her reception there, but would need to get a lot more friends first!

Then we went onto a house built into an old Volcanic rock quarry that was, briefly (story is just one day!) owned by Omar Sharrif and is now known as LagOmar. This was lovely, quirky property, with a mix of indoor and outdoor rooms and water features aplenty - We both felt happy that we could live here! It actually rained a fair bit while we were here.

The next stop was the place I'd nearly been the year before, before switching my attention to the cueva de los verdes.

This was Los Jameos del Agua. Another César Manrique creation. Here a large pond in a cave (actually a Lava tube, and part of the same flow as Cueva De Los Verdes) is home to a unique type of tiny, albino crab!

As you exit the cave, there's a swimming pool that looks remarkably like a Penguin pool in a zoo! It looked very appealing, but you can't swim it in any more, sadly, so we had a quick snack lunch (extremely good!) in the restaurant and then hopped back on the bus.

The next step was at an Aloe Vera plantation. This is a big seller in Lanzarote, but I didn't know much about it, except it looked very much like a succulent. Turns out it's more closely related to the Onion or Garlic, part of the Lilly family! Anyway, it was a surprisingly interesting and appropriately brief visit, rather than one of those stops where you feel obliged to buy something to pass the time.

Sadly our next stop DID fall into that category. Many of the people chose to stop for lunch (it was now far past 2PM and we'd got up at 7AM, so I'm glad we didn't), but the location chosen was a small restaurant/shop/bar on the edge of a small town, with nothing else to do. A 90 minute stop here was wasted time as far as I was concerned. A much better idea would have been to have offered lunch at Los Jameos del Agua, so that those NOT eating could have looked around some more.

That said, the buffet on offer actually looked pretty good and decent value at 8 Euros a head.

We then travelled up to the highest point of Lanzarote and took in the views over the coast, then we travelled back up to Arrecife, the capital, to visit the long time home of César Manrique (him again! Trust me, he's a BIG hero in Lanzarote), which is actually built into 5 bubbles in a lava flow!

There was an extra charge to go in here, but again, it was an interesting place to visit, although having admired his artwork, I think he's an average artist for a good architect!

The bus driver kindly dropped us at the airport and, with just hand luggage, our passage through security and onto the plane was easy enough.

We'd had a great little trip (back, for me) to Lanzarote, which had surprised me a little as I'd kind of expected it to be a bit repetitive, but whilst the locations were the same, the life was different enough to make each dive something genuinely new and, of course, for Lauren it was all new and it was good to see her enthusiasm for diving rekindled - Hopefully she will continue to enjoy it for years to come!

If I go back again in the near-ish future, I'll try and find a dive centre that explores the island a little more as I'm sure it'd be interesting to see something more of the undersea world of Lanzarote, but if you've not been already Safari are a great outfit to make your Lanzarote debut with!

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