Mauritius

Diving here is built around short boat rides. The centres sit on the beach at Flic en Flac, Trou aux Biches and Grand Baie, take a boatload of divers out through a gap in the fringing reef, and are usually on site within minutes rather than half an hour. The pattern is typically a two-tank morning with an optional single dive later, so the day is not swallowed whole — a rhythm that works if you are travelling with people who do not dive.

The island is volcanic and a fringing reef runs almost the whole way around it, so the underwater shape repeats: a lagoon floor of sand and coral heads, a reef edge, then a slope into open water. What changes is which coast you are on. The west and north-west lie in the lee of the south-east trade winds and carry most of the diving, while the exposed east and south get called off more often. Under the coral the rock is old lava, cut into ledges, chimneys and overhangs, and some of the better dives are structure rather than coral.

The wrecks are what the island is known for, and they are approachable ones: hulls sitting upright on sand rather than broken up, with open holds that make a sensible first taste of wreck diving. Most were put down deliberately as artificial reefs and have had decades to grow in, so they now behave like small reefs, holding grouper, moray and clouds of glassfish. The vessels' earlier careers are loosely recorded and the details vary between centres, so treat the backstories you are told as approximate.

It suits divers who want a straightforward resort week rather than an expedition: short crossings, warm water, and no liveaboard to commit to. Mixed groups work, since one trip can drop shallow and deep divers on the same piece of reef. What it is not is a big-animal destination — turtles, eagle rays and barracuda turn up along the drop-offs rather than being the reason you booked, and the spinner dolphins off the west coast are met from the boat on early-morning trips, not on scuba.