Azores — São Miguel

São Miguel dives from two harbours. Best Spot works from a kiosk on the Ponta Delgada marina and Açordiving from the Clube Naval in the same town; Azores Sub and Espírito Azul are listed at the Vila Franca do Campo marina, further east. The official site pages quote a boat time from each, and the gap is large. The Dori is five minutes from Ponta Delgada and a house reef in 4 to 20 metres is dived from the shore nearby, but Arcos da Caloura is 30 minutes from that marina against 15 from Vila Franca, Ilhéu de Vila Franca is 45 against 5, and the outer reef at Lourenços is 50 minutes and 21 km out (13 miles). Açordiving sells the day as a two-dive morning or afternoon session.

The rock is volcanic and repeats a few forms. Walls drop away fast, arches and lava tubes run back into the reef with several passages and entrances, and boulder ground is broken by sand. Morro das Capelas on the north coast is a wall that reaches 35 metres, Baixa do Espelho rises to 7 metres above a 35-metre floor, and off São Roque islet a catalogued collection of historic anchors has been laid as an artificial reef. Dusky groupers, several moray species, common octopus and ornate and ballan wrasse hold on the stone, stingrays lie on the sand, and white trevally, Almaco jacks and yellowmouth barracuda work the reef edges at Lourenços and the islet.

It suits divers who want a varied coastal week with a real wreck in it, on an island with daily nonstop flights, a hyperbaric chamber at the Divino Espírito Santo hospital in Ponta Delgada and enough above water to fill the afternoons. It is not the archipelago's big-animal address. Divers whose trip hinges on blue-water encounters with mobula rays and sharks over offshore seamounts should look at Pico and Faial, separate islands with their own flights and their own operators. São Miguel centres do sell trips to the Formigas islets and the Dollabarat seamount some 64 km offshore (40 miles), but that is sold apart from the island's own diving.