Scuba Diving on La Palma – Canary Islands – Spain
In July 2020 I was fortunate enough to head of to La Palma in between lock downs. At the time of writing this La Palma has just been put on safe lists again by many European countries such as The Netherlands, Germany and UK. Meaning, if you have some free time on your hands… it’s time to pack your scuba gear and head over to La Palma!
Where is La Palma?
La Palma is one of the seven Canary Islands close to Morocco and the Western Sahara. Seven beautiful islands in the Atlantic Ocean that you can reach from mainland Europe usually in less than a 2 to 5 hours flight.
With La Palma being so close to mainland Europe, it’s the perfect destination for a quick Scuba getaway. Well worth it, I had a fantastic week diving with Casa de Buceo!
Scuba Diving on La Palma with Casa de Buceo
Joost & Nanneke are the proud owners of Casa de Buceo – the dive shop on La Palma. They’re already on La Palma for over 12 years and they know all the great dive sites. They fell in love with La Palma and the diving on the island – whilst visiting since 2005. After a few years they took the plunge and settled down on the Island, ready to run their very own dive shop. And with succes!
Scuba Diving conditions on La Palma
The weather on La Palma is one of the sunniest in Europe. This helps keeping the ocean at a comfortable temperature. Think 25C in summer (July/August) and the lowest it will get to is 18C in January. I visited La Palma with a 7mm in summer and I guess I could have gotten away with a 5mm – but if you make a lot of dives I would say a 7mm will bring you a bit more warmth underwater.
On the surface you can expect a lot of sun – even in winter. The avarage air temp in January is 18C and in summer expect to enjoy 30C! In winter there can be some swell at one side of the island – so then you just go to the other side of the island. It’s always calm on one side, and the island isn’t that big. Meaning; you can dive easily the entire year in La Palma!
Amazing scuba dive sites on La Palma
With a total of 40 dive sites on La Palma, there’s plenty of choice! During my 4 days of diving we visited 7 different sites, and one (Malpique) twice!
Grab a cup of tea and watch my vlog next to get a good visual about the dive site on La Palma. After the vlog I’ll talk about some of the dive sites that I visited more in depth. I’ll also include some details such as maximum depth, marine life and other relevant information.
The visibility is amazing btw, as you will see, atleast 30 meters most of the time. Really great for diving.
My La Palma Scuba Diving video
Dive site: Malpique
Dive site: La Bombilla
Close to the dive shop, west of La Palma, we find the easy and fun dive site La Bombilla. This is a great and diverse dive site with many overhangs, huge porcupine fish, cuttle fish and rays!
In one of the small caverns we found a ray hunting (you can see him in my video). We also saw a beautiful cuttlefish AND again Sea Horses 😀
Dive site: Puerto Naos
On the third day we went to Puerto Naos close to a local beach (la Roca del Mar). Fairly shallow dives. Don’t think I went deeper than 18 meter. Although I believe this dive site can take you all the way to 35 meters! Lot’s happening with eels, star fish knocking over urchins and big scorpeon fish. No current at all, great visibility and a huge dive site where we made two dives of an hour each and didn’t see the same thing twice.
Dive site: El Faro
This was one of the most breath taking dive sites. Very close Malpique is the dive site El Faro where you can find huge basalt rocks underwater. An entire wall of them. And the visibility is just amazing. You can keep looking into the distance. I hoovered right above and next to the basalt rocks and I can tell you I’ve never seen anything like it! And they’re only like 10 meters deep or something.
Want to book a scuba holiday to La Palma?
Are you interested in a Scuba Holiday to La Palma now after reading my article??
Then there’s two ways to go about this!
- You contact Casa de Buceo directly and sort out your own flights etc.
* WEBSITE CASA DE BUCEO* - You contact me and I can get you a quote for a trip that includes flights + diving + rental car + accommodation. To give you a ballpark…. 6 dives, comfy apt and rental car will cost you approximately €499,- + flight per person.
*FULL TRAVEL INQUIRY*
