Dive/Trip Report - El Hierro, Canary Islands

[wcosue]

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.

 

[wcosue]

 

[drrich2]

Nice write-up of a place I didn't even realize people dove; sounds like a great trip. Couple of questions:

How did you come to pick that destination, amongst so many other potential places?

And this:

No drift diving is allowed in the marine reserve.

Whenever I've drift dove, I didn't have much choice; there was a current, and if I jumped in, I drifted. And all your dives were within a marine preserve.

Richard.

 

[wcosue]

We choose El Hierro as we enjoy going to interesting places we have never been and experiencing new and unique locations. It is not unusual you have not heard of El Hierro as Canary Island diving is very familiar to the Europeans, (mostly Spanish & Germans) but Carlos & Anita said there are very few North American visitors. English is not spoken or understood by the majority of the population.

Regarding drift diving, I meant that you are not allowed to roll in and then have the Zodiac/RIB pick you up as the current has taken you down current. With the dives within the marine reserve, you tie up to a buoy and you dive a pattern out from there and return to the same buoy for the safety stop and resurface.

 

[drrich2]

Thanks for the added info. Wonder how long & how much hassle it is to fly there? The 'not much English here' thing would be a barrier to a lot of U.S. folks.

Very interesting about not drift diving. So, I take it the currents at the sites chosen aren't strong enough to make this a hardship?

Richard.

 

[KathyV]

Thank you for the great report; you are the second person I know of (from the US) who has traveled to the Canary Islands recently. My friend and her husband also wanted to visit a new and unique location. She had a wonderful trip and said that it was gorgeous place! They are not divers but were there on vacation.

 

[Redshift]

It's a known place at least in Europe. They usually have underwater photography competitions there.
The Canaries are quite a big touristic destiny, but El Hierro is not as known as other islands that are larger, have more beach and cater more for tourists and where you find more hotels, restaurants, staff that speaks English, etc such as Tenerife, Gran Canaria...
The diving is certainly very good. Unless you like wrecks, because there are none. Well, there is a tiny wooden boat below 30m, maybe close to 40... don't have my logbook here to be precise.
I went with Benthos Buceo, also excellent people. And they were at the time the only ones catering for technical diving.

 

[Joe Cool]

Thanks for the added info. Wonder how long & how much hassle it is to fly there? The 'not much English here' thing would be a barrier to a lot of U.S. folks.

Very interesting about not drift diving. So, I take it the currents at the sites chosen aren't strong enough to make this a hardship?

Richard.

Rich, Spanish is listed as the second official language of the USA. So you guys really should not be too worried about venturing into countries like Spain ;-) LoL!

 

[KOMPRESSOR]

La Restinga is listed among Top 10 destinations in Europe. You can have good diving from most of the Canary Islands, but in this place the whole town is all about diving. There are 9 dive centres within 400x400 yds...
Add to that, El Hierro is a fabolous destination for you vacation, unless you like night clubs and partying. The island is indeed very varied. Green on top and in the north - volcanic all over. S unny and warm all year.
We were there recently, and I could go back any day.

You have to fly in to preferably Tenerife. Then there's a rather expensive ferry ride over to El Hierro (2,5 hours), or you can fly in for almost the same price from Tenerife North Int. Bonus is that if you rent a car in Tenerife, it costs almost nothing to bring it on the ferry.

You book your stay on www.booking.com or www.airbnb.com.

Restaurant prices are affordable, and there are plenty of small cosy ones in La Restinga. A cold beer costs 1,20 Euro served at you table in most places



.

 

[Sunn]

1.20 eur for a beer !

Hierro prices have been terribly rising those last years !

I remember the time it was possible to eat for 10 eur .... 4 persons, including drinks !
(at that time, it was in pesetas)