I recently went to Mallorca and was extremely suprised at the wealth of life within the sea. There is an island called El Toro which was made a nature reserve in 2003. The life there was breathtaking. Shoals of Barracuda, plenty of octopus, wrasse, nudibranchs, bream, lobster and an eagle ray! The diving is very easy. Great weather, no current, excellent visibility and the water temperature was 20 degrees Celsius. Which isn't bad for the middle of May.
It is very easy to get to. I booked a flight from Gatwick with Easyjet and booked the accomodation and diving through the dive centre. (www.maddivers.co.uk) They met me the night I arrived and we went through our plans for the week. The island itself is great. English is widely spoken and the food and beer is cheap too.
Dive Safe Daniel King
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I have been holidaying in Palmanova every year for the past 10 years or so and I love the place. I love it because it has everything you can ask for from a family holiday destination as well as some terrific diving.
The best of the diving is reachable by mini-bus transfer from your hotel with dive boats leaving from various ports on the west coast, about 3miles away from the resort. There is some diving done directly from Palmanova/Magalluf itself but the short minibus trip gets you access to the national marine reserves at Malgrats and El Toro islands where the quality of the diving is a lot better, so I always insist on going with a company that will pick me up at my hotel and take me through to the west coast dive sites. The life around the west coast nature reserves is superb. I normally dive in May and September and the marine life is really impressive. This year there were lots of bream, wrasse, scorpion fish, damsel fish, barracuda and loads of octopus - apparently they breed in the spring after they've come into shallow water. Water temperature in May is 21C and in September 28C and visibility on the west coast sites is about 20-30m. Nitrox is available at some centres nowadays.
When you're not diving there is loads of stuff to do. There are countless restaurants - ask your dive guide where's best as some of them are superb and others seem to think it's chips with everything. We had some beautiful Meditteranean dishes in Palmanova and Magalluf and we normally go up to Palma once a trip for a fantastic Indian meal on the waterfront. For children there are 2 enormous beaches with loads of room to play as well as waterparks, football pitches, tennis courts, etc.
Travel is dead easy. You fly into Plama de Mallorca airport and Palmanova / Magalluf is about 15mins by taxi. Like I said earlier, you don't want to dive out of Palmanova itself, but use that as your base as it's set up superbly for a holiday resort, but make sure you get a minibus service included in your dive package from the centre so you also get the best of the diving on the island!
By: John McDonald, Coventry, UK.
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