Azores — Pico & Faial

A day on the offshore banks is a commitment rather than a dive slot. Boats leave the harbour early, run for hours across open ocean, and the group dives, eats and waits on board before covering the same distance home; there is nowhere to shelter in between. Skippers make the call on the morning from the swell and the forecast, so book a week rather than a single trip and treat a lost day or two as normal. Shorter coastal runs and whale-watching trips fill the gaps.

The diving asks for discipline more than technique. Once you are in, there is often no bottom in sight and nothing to hold, so depth is managed on your computer, the group stays tight around the guide, and everyone moves with whatever the water is doing. Entries are quick and the wait before anything shows can be long. Divers used to working along a reef or a wall often find the first blue-water dive disorienting, and most settle into it within a couple of days.

Close to the islands the character changes. The rock is black basalt cut into arches, ledges and boulder slopes, with algae and encrusting growth in place of coral, so the palette runs grey-green rather than tropical, and one of the sheltered Faial sites sits inside a volcanic crater breached by the sea. These runs are short, cheap and far less exposed, which makes them the fallback when an offshore trip is scrubbed and the sensible place to shake gear down at the start of a week. Training and check dives happen here too.

It suits divers already comfortable in open water who would rather have one strong encounter than a high dive count. Bring more exposure protection than the latitude suggests: the water stays cool by holiday standards even at its late-summer peak, and thermoclines offshore can be sharp. Anyone after easy shallow reef, macro subjects or a guaranteed two dives every morning will be happier elsewhere. Non-divers are well served, with whale-watching boats leaving the same harbours and Pico's volcano across the water from Horta.