Location recommendations for Iceland, Scotland, and southern Spain.

[ArborArcher]

My partner and I are getting our dry suit certs and plan on diving at the end of July in Iceland and Scotland, and warm water diving in Costa del Sol. I'm hoping to get some recommendations on good locations to dive and dive shops to book with (or ones to avoid).

We are flying into Reykjavik and plan on renting a car and doing some road tripping, so anywhere we can drive to (and back to Reykjavik) within 8 days is doable.

We're more limited in Scotland, as we're staying in Perth but will also rent a car and drive to Oban, or thereabouts for a day and a night to get a day of diving in. An outfit called Puffin Dive Centre offered up some Shore Dives, although our initial goal was to go out and try to see some basking sharks. Looks like with our time frame and budget, that won't happen but we just want to dive anyway.

Finally, we will be in Costa del Sol/Malaga Spain for a week and just want to dive every chance we get and chill out by the beach. We'd like to nail down just one dive shop that can do 3-4 days of guided tour dives.

We really want to do a night dive at any of those locations as well (most likely Spain).

Hopefully ya'll have had some good experiences to share from those places.

General travel tips about those locations is welcome too, thanks!

 

[diveUAE]

For Iceland of course Silfra is very famous. We did it in August 2020 - for us it was an ok dive - cold, but cool to dive between the continents. We dive with dive.is and had an Italian guide, who was amazing. We also did a few other dives - one with “fissures”/bubbles, don’t remember the other, but quite unremarkable.

But if you can get up to Akureyri (I’m not sure it’s a good idea to spend the time driving there, when you only have 8 days) the dives at Strytan were very good - just make sure you have great buoyancy or you won’t be able to dive the “big” Strytan (it’s very impressive, but I also really loved the small)

We spend 16 days in Iceland and wish we could go back - it was amazing: nature, food and the thermal springs (there are so many, make sure you try more than just “blue lagoon”

 

[Doc]

@diveUAE , to augment your note:

Iceland, it’s kind of a narrow, a very short slot in the middle of a grassy field, but…

Dive Between Two Continents in This Frigid Fissure in Iceland

Filled with pure glacier water, Silfra is the only place on Earth where divers can touch two continental plates at once

www.smithsonianmag.com

No more useful than the Belize Blue Hole or any other Logbook Dance Card entry. I don’t know if there’s a PADI Distinctive Specialty, or more importantly: a cool patch. Gopher it.

And this is fun, how? Chicks will dig it.

 

[BFRedrocks]

No more useful than the Belize Blue Hole or any other Logbook Dance Card entry. I don’t know if there’s a PADI Distinctive Specialty, or more importantly: a cool patch. Gopher it.

And this is fun, how? Chicks will dig it.

FWIW, I had a blast diving Silfra because...wait for it...I'm a geologist!! For me, this was (at the time) number one on my dive bucket list. Not for the marine life, not for the warm water and ocean breezes, but for the geology (in the fissure and the surrounding Golden Circle). I'm sure I'm a minority in the dive community (being a diving geologist), but for me, the trip we did to Iceland and the Silfra, Strytan, and geothermal river dives were amazing. YMWV of course.

 

[Doc]

Never been, never even thought about it, but any number of my British dive buddies go to Almeria Spain, mostly I believe to be drunk, but…

Where in Spain?

I want to go for my PADI ADvanced Open Water cert. and thought to go to Spain where the waters are a little warmer than chilly England. I have consulted Lonely Planet and the interweb thingy, but I can't really seem to find much accurate information. Can anyone tell me where the best place to...

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