Advice for Malta/Gozo holiday

[Crispo]

Hi, i'm looking for some advice for a first trip to malta/gozo with the wife, for a week in late September. We've just booked flights so any tips on accommodation or dive centres much appreciated.

We're both recreational padi divers (her AOW, me RD) reasonably experienced (about 200 dives each) and interested in doing a mixture of some unaccompanied diving (for shallow shore dives) with some guided dives for the BH and wrecks

There seems a lot of chat about unaccompanied dives and fatalities, but i'm assuming common sense has a lot to play? We loved hiring a jeep and doing our own thing in bonaire. However these were very simple shore dives, well marked, with easy entry/exit points. I'm hoping its possible to do the same in malta, obviously safety is the primary concern, but also danger of missing the site or some parts of it. We're looking for a dive centre to hire gear and tanks from, get some advice for local dives, weather etc if we go it alone, and then guide us on the more interesting/challenging sites

Is one island better than the other for sites? Or they accessible from either island? I've only just started looking at the dive sites on offer and seems a lot of options. Gozo seems a lot quieter than malta, I think we'd like to stay somewhere with stuff to do on any non diving days, and a decent choice of restaurants etc.

Also any suggestions for car hire?

Thanks for any help

 

[CamC]

Gozo's got some great sites, but it's really quiet. Valletta itself has a lot going on, as does St Julian's just outside Sliema where we stayed last time. (Dived with Divewise there, and can highly recommend them.)

Maltese drivers have a bad reputation, but if you're used to driving on the left it's straightforward enough. Your dive centre, once you're booked, can usually get you the best hire deal locally.

 

[Crispo]

Gozo's got some great sites, but it's really quiet. Valletta itself has a lot going on, as does St Julian's just outside Sliema where we stayed last time. (Dived with Divewise there, and can highly recommend them.)

Maltese drivers have a bad reputation, but if you're used to driving on the left it's straightforward enough. Your dive centre, once you're booked, can usually get you the best hire deal locally.

Thanks Cam

When you stayed in St Julians is it a long boat trip to get to the Gozo sites? It looks close enough not to be a big deal but hard to tell. I'm thinking staying a few days in Gozo would be enough then the rest somewhere on malta

 

[KevinColl]

Hi, I will be over at Gozo in late September also - staying in the Ta Cenc area. Keen if anyone has recomentations of diving school. Have been in touch with both St Andrews and Moby divers but a week or so later and no response back. Is there any restriction on number of dives per day? Someone advised that only one dive in the morning and one in the pm?? Am used to doing a couple before lunch.

Thanks - and sorry for hijacking the post

 

[dberry]

We stayed in Sliema as a base for touring Malta, but didn't dive until we got to Gozo. We used VRBO/AirBnB on both islands, which worked out extremely well. Driving on the left is no problem for me, and I'm strange in that I actually enjoyed driving there (and in Rome!) I would not recommend trying to hit the Gozo sites from a base on Malta. We took our rental car to Gozo on the ferry and spent a few days there before flying home.

On Gozo we dove with Blue Waters Dive Cove in Qala (the "Q"s are essentially silent in Maltese, unless you can do that glottal stop thing.) They were great; my daughter and I did our AOW with Doris, a swiss lady who lives on Gozo full time. Her husband, Brendan, teaches tech and more advanced stuff. Gozo is so small that the actual location of your dive center makes no real difference - no dive site is very far away by car.

You really do want to let an experienced local at the shop suggest sites each morning, since the winds and tides can make one side or another calm or treacherous. Comino is the even smaller island between Gozo and Malta, but we didn't get there (requires a boat trip.)

There was plenty to see and do on Malta, although I wish we had time to dive on the main island. My wife and one of my daughters don't dive, but they took a public bus to get to some historic sites on Gozo while we dove.

Apparently Malta is an easy, relatively cheap flight from the UK and most of Europe; I'd go back sooner, if getting there wasn't such a PITA from the US.

 

[mantajohn]

Strongly recommend that you contact Divewise, Malta. Very professional and friendly.

John

 

[CamC]

When you stayed in St Julians is it a long boat trip to get to the Gozo sites? It looks close enough not to be a big deal but hard to tell. I'm thinking staying a few days in Gozo would be enough then the rest somewhere on malta

From St Julian's we drove up to Cirkewwa and then on from there - it's much quicker than doing the whole journey by boat. There are a few nice wrecks there you can shore dive on the Malta side too.

The twin centre idea is a good one. The peace and quiet is on Gozo, but most of the culture and night life is around Valletta.

 

[Gareth J]

The first point is to decide where you are staying.

I have dived both in Malta in Gozo. Gozo is so small that all of the sites are easy to reach. (Malta is not exactly large.)

From were we where based, travelling to Gozo for diving seemed impractical. This is less of an issue if you are staying in the north of the island. The north is the more touristy part of the island.

Peter Lemon's book on diving Malta and Gozo is quite a good reference if you are choosing to pick your own sites.

As a general rule we did two dives a day, mainly because we took things easy, rather falling into the Maltese pace of life.
There is a lot of history to see - if you are interested. If you want to do the Hypogeum, you need to book this well in advance online (before you go to Malta).
I would recommend the harbour tour of Valletta, one of the smaller boats are normally better, and barter over the price.
Mdina is worthy of a visit.

We used a guide when we visited Gozo, for a number of reasons this seemed more sensible and made the logistics much easier. The roads in Gozo are much worse than those in Malta.
I used Calypso Divers in Gozo, I would also recommend Peter Bullen, who works for a number of facilities on Gozo.
I tend to use Divemed in Malta.

Gareth

 

[1976]

We had a 7-day trip to Malta in the 2nd week of September last year, spending 5 days diving (2 dives a day). All the dives were shore dives except the two on Comino.

We were looking for something a little different to you as we are strictly guided-only divers (AOW but <100 dives), but some of this information still might be helpful.

We stayed in St Julian's for the whole week at a very reasonably priced hotel just off the bay, right by a bus stop, and walking distance to Dive Malta (Dive Malta with DiveMalta snorkelling and diving school, snorkeling and scuba dive in Malta, Comino and Gozo. A PADI, SSI and BSAC UK school, offering courses from beginner, snorkel diver to advanced diver grades. Run by Stuart Jones from the UK , an SSI, PADI, TDI and BSAC Advanced Instructor.) which is right on the water.

Dive Malta were extremely helpful and friendly and the operation was well run. We hired all our gear except masks and computers and found it to be in good condition and good quality. On the day before we started Stuart explained their planned dives for the week and we decided to go on all of them.

We did one day (2 dives - Inland Sea and Azure Window) on Gozo which was easily do-able in a day from our start location (Dive Malta drove us over on the ferry).

We also did the day trip to Comino on the boat from the dive centre with 2 dives (caves and a wreck which I forget the name of), which was a great day in incredibly clear water with a nice swimming stop in the lagoon during the surface interval.

The other 3 days we did sites around Malta itself including Um El Faroud, H.M.S. Maori and Cirkewwa Arch. On these days they journeys to the sites were very short so we did our 2 dives in the morning and then sightseeing in the afternoon.

We got around everywhere very easily by bus, including Mdina, Dingli cliffs for the sunset, Valetta a few times and took the ferry over to the 3 Cities.

The last day when we couldn't dive due to flying late evening we went back up to Gozo on the bus/ferry and had a look around on land (it is indeed very quiet but there are a few things to see).

We had no need of a car as the buses were so good, but obviously we weren't lugging diving gear or needing to get to specific/isolated spots. Outside of the city the driving looked OK, apart from some very narrow streets in some of the smaller towns, but I wouldn't have fancied it in the main built up areas (I am a bit of a driving wuss but the general driving style definitely had a level of assertiveness I would have been uncomfortable with, and parking looked as though it could be a challenge but maybe you could find accommodation with parking spaces).

In summary I'm not sure you would particularly need to split your stay into 2 locations unless you are really keen on doing several Gozo sites. If you are wanting to do more than 2 dives per day perhaps you would not find enough within easy reach by staying in 1 location, but for us there was so much else to do on Malta that was a happy medium.

 

[Jiminy]

Hi, I will be over at Gozo in late September also - staying in the Ta Cenc area. Keen if anyone has recomentations of diving school. Have been in touch with both St Andrews and Moby divers but a week or so later and no response back. Is there any restriction on number of dives per day? Someone advised that only one dive in the morning and one in the pm?? Am used to doing a couple before lunch.

Thanks - and sorry for hijacking the post

How was your trip? Thinking about malta...