We dove out of La Restinga, El Hierro, Canary Islands, Spain for 5 days, 29 May -2 June, 2015. We choose this week during the “slow” season on purpose to avoid the large crowds that occur later in the summer (specifically September -December). We used Arrecifal dive center (http://www.arrecifal.com/idiomas/en/index.html) and highly recommend them because of their excellent customer service and value! Carlos & Anita (the owners) were extremely helpful with both the diving and the trip logistics of arranging our rental car, accommodations and recommendations for land touring and restaurants. Both Carlos & Anita are multilingual and provided thorough dive briefings in English, Spanish, German and French. We dove in rental 5 mm hooded wetsuits (all equipment was brand new or seemed almost brand new). I also had no trouble renting a dive computer when my computer stopped working midweek. I would recommend bringing gloves as fire worms are plentiful.
El Hierro is a volcanic island so there was interesting volcanic seascape diving. (Coral reefs are nonexistent.) We dove 10 of the 24 listed dive sites listed on the island, with repeat dives at El Bajon and the harbor night dive. Arrecifal kept a list of where we dove so there weren’t repeats unless requested. All of the dives are within a marine reserve with abundant marine life including eels, amberjack, grouper, yellow fin tuna, some nudibranchs and several large schools of barracuda. Trumpet fish, parrot fish are plentiful at all the dive sites. We saw at least one ray on most dives. No drift diving is allowed in the marine reserve. El Bajon is the volcanic creator dive and while it is possible to dive much deeper we dove to 30 meters. One dive at El Bajon was with minimal current and the second dive was with significant current. Cueva de Diablo is a very pretty open cave dive with a skylight mid cave that allows for great pictures. El Desierto contains an entire sandbar of garden eels. Our favorite dive was the first of two night dives in the harbor of La Restinga. Carlos was great in pointing the Aplysia, Spanish dancers, octopus and multiple ray varieties. We were able to gently touch the underside of a large (5 ft.) sleeping butterfly ray and watch a large octopus travel along the harbor seafloor.
We spent the afternoon of two days touring around El Hierro in our rental car. The Vulcanological Center just north of La Restinga was fascinating and explains the geological formation of the island and eruption in Nov. 2011 using brand new interactive visual technology to present the information in a choice of four languages. The Orchilla lighthouse marks the old zero meridian and the “end of the earth” to Christopher Columbus. The El Golfo Valley amphitheater, the result of a massive landslide 50,000 years ago, was remarkable to view from the lookout just north of the valley. There were multiple well marked trekking trails of varying lengths (1.3 km-22.2 km) throughout the island as well.
El Hierro is a volcanic island so there was interesting volcanic seascape diving. (Coral reefs are nonexistent.) We dove 10 of the 24 listed dive sites listed on the island, with repeat dives at El Bajon and the harbor night dive. Arrecifal kept a list of where we dove so there weren’t repeats unless requested. All of the dives are within a marine reserve with abundant marine life including eels, amberjack, grouper, yellow fin tuna, some nudibranchs and several large schools of barracuda. Trumpet fish, parrot fish are plentiful at all the dive sites. We saw at least one ray on most dives. No drift diving is allowed in the marine reserve. El Bajon is the volcanic creator dive and while it is possible to dive much deeper we dove to 30 meters. One dive at El Bajon was with minimal current and the second dive was with significant current. Cueva de Diablo is a very pretty open cave dive with a skylight mid cave that allows for great pictures. El Desierto contains an entire sandbar of garden eels. Our favorite dive was the first of two night dives in the harbor of La Restinga. Carlos was great in pointing the Aplysia, Spanish dancers, octopus and multiple ray varieties. We were able to gently touch the underside of a large (5 ft.) sleeping butterfly ray and watch a large octopus travel along the harbor seafloor.
We spent the afternoon of two days touring around El Hierro in our rental car. The Vulcanological Center just north of La Restinga was fascinating and explains the geological formation of the island and eruption in Nov. 2011 using brand new interactive visual technology to present the information in a choice of four languages. The Orchilla lighthouse marks the old zero meridian and the “end of the earth” to Christopher Columbus. The El Golfo Valley amphitheater, the result of a massive landslide 50,000 years ago, was remarkable to view from the lookout just north of the valley. There were multiple well marked trekking trails of varying lengths (1.3 km-22.2 km) throughout the island as well.