Diving the Ibizan Triangle

WideWorld blows Balearic bubbles

Diving opens up the planet. There’s no question. The second you plunge under the waterline, mouthpiece jammed between your teeth and just the sound of your own breathing to break the silence, you’re under a spell. Reefs bristle with fish, sponges and octopuses, and the world above seems farther away than the dozen or so metres it really is.

Many people are put off by diving in the UK. The cumbersome equipment, cold-water dives, or the poor visibility of many sites makes them reach for the TV remote instead. Diving’s for people in the Red Sea, or the Barrier Reef, or Indonesia’s awesome coral displays, they think. They’re wrong. There’s a place to dive just a couple of hours from the UK that’s a world heritage site, cheap to visit, and offers conditions you’d dream of. It seems strange to say it, but it’s Ibiza.

Long bedevilled by a raucous reputation, it seems as though the Balearic’s hotspot has it all these days. As well as its ample nightlife, there’s a growing reputation for bike races, sailing and kayaking – and diving. Not many people know it, but there’s even an underwater UNESCO world heritage site here, in the National Park at Las Salinas. Swaying with enormous prairies of posidonia, a rare sea grass, it was given protected status back in 1999. Ten years on, and the Ibizan coast is still somewhat of a hidden gem. Late in the year, the crowds of tourists disperse and you’re left with all the best parts of the island to yourself: the weather is still balmy, the sea warm.

WideWorld have been invited to dive and experience the waters for ourselves. Taking a RIB boat out from Cala Tarida, a bay just south of San Antonio, we skip over the waves for 20 minutes to Isla de Esperta. It’s a beautiful, sun-bleached rock, skirted with hidden coves; one of which is the base for our dive as the anchor sinks to the sea floor below us.

Final equipment checks all done, we push ourselves off the side of the boat, resting with a steady bob in the warm waters. Then the descent: air expelled from the buoyancy control device, and we slowly sink down, equalising the pressure every metre or so until we hold steady at around 10 metres.

It’s blue: the visibility here is excellent and there’s far more life and growth down here than you would imagine. Starfish bathe on the rocks; sardines swarm around the bubbles rising from our mouthpieces.

Our dive plan takes us around the cliff-like edge of the island, spotting eels, even octopus in crevices and cracks. The sky seems far away, while looking down, the cliff descends into an inky darkness far below that instils a momentary panic and a quick check of your equipment.

We’re only scratching the surface as far as sites go: Ibiza houses several excellent wreck dives of varying depths, some of which even Open Water PADI divers can get to. Famously, the largest shipwreck in Europe is here: the Don Pedro collided with a small island off the coast in 2007, and now its 140m hulk lies at a depth of 25-35m; it is now being colonised quite happily by vegetation and animal life. Diving has given this tragedy a sense of purpose again.

With a Caribbean feel to the waters here, it’s no wonder that there’s even a mysterious angle to a few of the offshore crags. Es Vedra, an uninhabited island off the south-east coast – clearly visible to us as we clamber back aboard the dive boat and disentangle ourselves from wetsuits – has a strange reputation with the locals we meet.

“There is a triangle here, in the south,” one tells us with some glee. “The Es Vedra triangle. There, the birds get lost.” A magnetic anomaly exists here, so they say; and a local legend is recalled about 1979 flight from Minorca that ditched after reporting UFO sightings over the lonely limestone outcrop.

Triangle or not, there’s little risk to the diver: an emergency landing wouldn’t be necessary when you’re experiencing the sensation of flight that exists in a SCUBA dive. But as the sun sets over the peak of Isla de Esperta and the captain throws open the throttle of the RIB boat, you can see the reason why someone would want to cook up a story like that. Ibizan diving is still a little bit of a secret. Why not keep it that way?

For more information about Ibiza, go to www.Ibiza.travel

We dived with

www.venaibiza.com, who run a beginner session €115 and Open Water PADI training for €450.

We stayed at

www.escucons.com, a small farmhouse hotel in the quiet countryside of Eastern Ibiza. Double rooms begin at €235 including breakfast.

We flew with

www.thomson.co.uk/flights, who fly to Ibiza direct from 20 airports around the UK from £149. Between November and May, your best bet is to try RyanAir (www.ryanair.com).

We also tried

Cycling with www.ibizasport.com; one day of cycling starts at €16 and takes you around some of Ibiza’s brilliant set-piece bike routes with varying difficulty levels.

Sea Kayaking with www.ibizamundoactivo.com, who give you the chance to take to the waves and explore the cliffs, caves and coves of the coast.