Woohoo, i'm back in the little old UK again, just had 2 weeks in Lanzarote (only 3 days diving though) so thought i'd write a quick little something.
I always planned to do a day or two or diving out there (went with friends who don't dive) but just took my computer and mask. Hadn't really looked up dive centres before I went or anything, so was very much a "see what happens" type holiday.
Anyway, we were staying in Puerto del Carmen, and on our first day some people came by our pool offering try dives and things. Had a talk to them, seemed good, so I organised something for the next week (I had a cold for the first few days).
The people from the pool were Manta Diving (
http://www.manta-diving-lanzarote.com). Was a nice little place, based near the beach in Puerto del Carmen and all English people there (no trying to do dodgy translations of Spanish or German or whatever). There were just three of them who did the main diving bits (plus a couple of others who did snorkelling and Discover Scuba and stuff) - Jim, Sean and Linda - so obviously fairly small, but friendly.
I turned up for the first day of diving, found some kit, stuck it all together and worked out what we were doing - they've got a good map on the wall in reception of all the sites, although are in the middle of doing a better one now. Ready to go, the shop is actually probably 150m from the harbour / beach entry points, but its not a bad walk down. OK it'd be nice to be closer, but its frankly far easier walking down than piling stuff in and out of minibuses like all but one of the other centres does that I didn't mind. There was another right on the shore (Safari), but they didn't seem all that interested in talking to me when I went there - all the others are based elsewhere so its minibuses to and from the dive sites with any other centre.
Anyway, onto the dives...
They're pretty much all based around the main reef running along the front of the harbour, which has a gentle snady slope down from the harbour to around 20m, then the wall which drops down to 40-60m and more in places. Its a good place to dive, with the spectacular walls and scenery (loads of little cave things, overhangs, holes, that kind of thing) with lots of fish too (for some reason I wasn't expecting much life...). During my 6 dives I saw (amongst other things) a few really big groupers, a little octopus in daytime (apparently unusual, the first one i've seen, really cute squidgy little things, but shy). Unfortunately I missed the Manta ray, it was around between two of my dives but had gone later (apparently most people there haven't seen one in thousands of dives). Shame, but never mind.
I did Blue Hole a couple of times (around 35m max), which to be honest I didn't think was too fantastic - lots of fuss for a little gap through the reef. I much preferred the Red Coral, just a part of the reef with a big overhang where a bit of (surprisingly) red coral is growing completely on its own - looks very out of place on the bare volcanic rock, but that dive really was brilliant - wonderful underwater landscape, although it is quite deep (around 40-45m). Cathedral was also really good, again similar scenery but the cathedral itself was quite cool, going right up inside and looking out, with all the thousands of tiny fish swimming around up the top end of it - beautiful! We did another one on the wall, can't remember where, but similar stuff, came across "Little Wreck", which to be fair is not much more than a big rowing boat. There are some bigger wrecks in the harbour but didn't bother with them - from what i'd read before I went it sounded certainly more Stanegarth than Thistlegorm! Hehe. Unfortunately the last dive really wasn't very good, we went along the harbour wall, a max of only around 20m, and really didn't see much of anything - apparently you occasionally see rays and stuff over there, but when we went nothing! My logbook entry I believe reads "Stoney on a Sunny Day" - not the best end to the diving, but can't be helped I suppose.
Anyway, the diving was really nice on the whole (but don't do the harbour wall, if anyone offers). If you can do the depth then I did find the scenery that bit better down at 40-50m than up at sub-30m depths, probably just because they're that bit quieter, less sandy, not had so many people splatting on everything. If the Red Coral was at 25m I don't believe it wouldn't be there now, it'd have been knocked off long ago.
As for Manta, I really would recommend them - the loveliest bunch of people i've met in any dive shop, really go all out to make sure you can do what you want to do, as best you can. Half of my dives were just me and the guide so I wasn't limited by someone else's air or depth, the others were all just one other, and arranged so that my dive wasn't cut short because of someone else - the new OW divers and stuff went in at different times or with someone else. The fins I had on the first dive were full-foot and quite floppy, I couldn't frog-kick in them or anything, so after seeing me failing to move forward (I always frog kick at home, and couldn't get back into the swing of "normal" finning) they dug me out some wetsuit boots and some proper fins for the rest of the diving - far better. Dives with hired kit were €28, but I paid €156 for 6 dives - around £15 per dive or so.
Now, back to my twinset and drysuit! :O)
David