Diving in Tarifa, Spain

After 4 hours and one of the hottest drives I have ever experienced we arrived at our campsite in Tarifa, Spain where we were hoping to dive for the next 3 days.

Being the kite boarding/wind surfing capital of the world, Tarifa is usually incredibly windy, which poses some difficulties for hopeful divers. Sure enough our first day, the conditions were poor so we could not go out and instead just walked around the town. Tarifa is really beautiful with narrow cobblestone streets and secret courtyards that you could glimpse through slightly open doors.

Being Spain, there were countless very trendy shops, like this Vibram shoes store selling shoes with toes on then and Pygmies, a children's clothing shop.

Our favorite place was Nuno's suggestion, Cafe Azul where we ate in a back room filled with pillows and low tables, perfect for a siesta after a nice meal of fruit and crepes.

Two cool things about Tarifa are that Tangier, Morocco is only 35 minutes away by ferry and there is a castle/fortess that still has a catapault and large cauldrons to pour burning olive oil onto scaling intruders.

To drown our sorrows about not being able to dive, we headed to the beach (also not such a good idea during record wind).

Aside from wind, Tarifa also has a very large sand dune overlooking the bay.

We celebrated our lazy day of wandering at a really nice dinner in town.

The following day was more calm so we did a noon dive at Las Ancoras (anchor) off the light house point. There were so many fish, big ones, since it is a marine park and the topography was high relief rock walls with deep sandy channels in between. It was a really nice dive. Rita and Nuno had to get back to Faro so Filipe and I met up with another post doc, Onno, to do some seagrass sampling on Monday. It also happened to be a religious fiesta day and everyone had gathered at the harbor, apparently to watch local kids struggle to make it to the end of this wooden pole over the water that was being slathered with grease. The incentive appeared to be large fish hanging at the end of the pole that were wrapped in old looking plastic bags.....yum.


Don't let the dry suite fool you, Onno did his previous work in the North Sea at -5 to 0 Celsius only wearing a 7ml wetsuit. The views from the boat of Tarifa were great and eventually Africa appeared out of the fog (background of some pics below). We also saw a green turtle swimming by, but of course I missed it while fumbling with my camera.

Filipe points to Africa....

It was a hot day and very calm conditions which is a good thing since we spent about 3 hours on the boat searching for an elusive cymodocea seagrass bed. We finally found it and did the dive to collect tissue samples for Onno and Filipe's genetic work. Then there was still time and the conditions were still good so we did a dive to see the Laminaria kelp species at 80 ft. This was really cool for me since I do not know the kelps out here at all. As soon as we climbed back on board and before we even had a chance to remove our hoods, we were each handed a glass of beer by the captain....and a display of nice bread, cheese and proscuitto. It was a great end to the dive, although not very re-hydrating.

We hit the road after a few coffees and a second lunch on land, made it home pretty late. However, I really did not get enough of driving Spain's highways so tomorrow we will set out again on the open road, but this time we are heading to Cabo Palos on the Med about 9 hrs east from here. The diving is supposed to be amazing and I just pray there is no wind!

ps. I hosted a wine tasting party last night for some people at the lab. We tried about 10 bottles and my favorite was a red (tinto) from Alentejo. I also made my first squid dish ever, from scratch!