Dive holiday in the Canaries - how high in the hills can my hotel be?

[frogoutofwater]

We're planning a dive holiday in the Canaries in May - 3 days in Tenerife, then 4 days on La Gomera. As we prefer hotels with charm to concrete monsters on the beach, I've been looking at some small, rural hotels in Tenerife. Some of them seem to be fairly far up on the hills - e.g. 500 metres, 1100 metres, etc. We were also thinking of doing some hiking on our days off, but are conscious of the need to avoid ascending to high altitudes.

We're novice divers, we don't dive really deep (i.e. more than 70 feet) or for a really long time (less than an hour per dive, usually about 30-40 minutes), and we don't plan to dive more than once or twice a day on our diving days, which will probably alternate with other activities (e.g. Day 1 on Tenerife - dive, Day 2 - explore and walk, Day 3 on Tenerife - dive, Day 4 - transfer to La Gomera by boat, Day 5 - dive, etc.)

What kinds of limits should we apply in terms of a) how high we go (with respect to where we stay on Tenerife and where we walk); and b) how deep we dive, for how long and how frequently, in order to be conservative? I've found two interesting small hotels in Tenerife, one at an altitude of 600 metres and the other at 1100 metres. And then there's that Parador in a volcano crater, but it also seems to be located above 1000 metres. Our hotel on La Gomera doesn't seem to be pose a problem - it's only about 60 metres above sea level.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Dr Deco]

Hello frog:

The best is to consult the fly-after-diver tables. These come from NOAA, I believe. They will give you the time to remain at sea level before you can ascend to a given altitude.

It depends on the final pressure group for your set of dives. It is much like the “surface interval table” in telling you what your residual gas load is.

Dr Deco :doctor:

 

[frogoutofwater]

Thanks, Dr Deco.

Actually, I found the NOAA tables yesterday when I was doing a little more research. This will be a good opportunity for Mr. Frogoutofwater and I review our understanding of dive tables and decompression issues. Because we usually only dive once or twice in a holiday, don't dive deep, and dive with a guide who has planned the dive for us, we haven't had much to worry about - and therefore, have become a little too relaxed about the topic. This trip should encourage us to be more pro-active in planning our diving (and our post-diving activities - looks like we're going to have to take a pass on our hotel's hot tub, too.)