Girona area - Lloret del Mar - question on dive shops

[Peter Perkins]

Hello folks,

I will be in Lloret del Mar (thats Girona area, near Barcelona) for around 2 weeks in the next days.

Anyone from there and with a recommendation on decent dive shops for a bit more experienced divers? I did some check and I find quite a few shops (in Lloret and in Tossa) but when I check their trip advisor reviews, the vast majority seems to have reviews from DSD or very junior divers (which I guess are easy to impress).

I care more for getting a good shop to dive with rather than the dive sites as I imagine well... there arent too many great dive sites (thats my experience from Greece and Italy coast line) but I cant venture to the 'cooler' locations as the vacation is with the family.

Thanks in advance!

 

[JMBL]

Why don't you push to Estartit or Escala ? Estartit is a National park with great diving spots and Escala is close to it.

 

[Matthijs]

I dove in both Estartit and Tossa and enjoyed both of them a lot. In Tossa we dove at Krakendive, which was great because it's the only dive shop that's right on the beach. That meant we could simply show up and don our gear to go for a dive together at any time. All other dive centers you need to book and show up at a certain time to take a van to the dive site.

In Estartit we dove with OceanSub on the Illes Medes which was also good but very different. Because it's a national park you can only go with operators in a group. Every operator has fixed time slots which makes the entire operation feel a little bit rushed at times. There's probably more to see in Medes than in Tossa, but the city is kind of meh. Tossa is a lot more fun to stay.

 

[Searcaigh]

I've dived at Llfranc with Triton Divers (Dutch/Spanish shop 2014) and they were pretty good and seemed to have a decent portfolio of dive sites but I only did two dives with them. They had a large RIB with decent ladder.

I also did a shore dive at Tossa de Mar. Weird set up as you gear up in town and take a minibus to the beach and walk through all these sunbathing Europeans (akin to seals basking on the beach) and straight into the water with a very steep drop off. I didn't have a buddy for this trip so it was a "follow the leader" dive, which was not so good for photography. This was organised by Raya's Diving in Barcelona where they have a shop as well as the shop in Tossa de Mar.