Cabrera Archipelago

The day is built around the permit. Boats leave Mallorca's south-east coast in the morning, the park sets how many divers may be in the water and where, and the plan is therefore fixed before you step aboard: usually two dives, briefed together, with the surface interval spent on the moorings in the sheltered natural harbour. It removes any option to improvise, but it also means you rarely share a site, and the rock shows little of the wear busier Balearic sites carry.

Underwater the shape of the place is consistent — vertical faces at the capes, undercut ledges, and house-sized blocks fallen from the cliffs and stacked at their feet, with posidonia filling the sand flats between the islands. Most of the diving sits within sport-diving depths, so a dive is usually spent moving along a wall rather than dropping down it, and bottom times run long. L'Imperial in the south holds the clearest water in the group; Cap Llebeig, out on the exposed west, only goes ahead when the sea allows.

Cova Blava is the set piece, and it is a wide cavern swim rather than a squeeze: what it asks for is calm and controlled buoyancy, not overhead training. Na Foradada's arch is the other structure worth planning a dive around, wide enough to read as a corridor with fish stacked in the opening. The archipelago as a whole suits divers who care more about fish behaviour and landscape than adrenaline — mild current, depths you can choose, and groupers relaxed enough to let you work out a shot before they move.