Fernando de Noronha

Diving here is boat-based and tightly scheduled. Operators load at Porto de Santo Antônio, the island's working harbour, and run morning outings of one or two tanks along the sheltered coast, with afternoon departures when conditions allow. Dives are guided, the number of licensed operators is small, and groups stay modest as a result. Most visitors dive in the morning and keep the afternoon for beaches and trails, so putting your dive days early in a stay leaves room to move them if the wind turns.

The archipelago is the eroded top of an old volcanic massif, and the sites follow that geology: basalt ridges and boulder fields dropping onto pale sand, undercut faces, and short fractures in the rock you can swim through. Most of them sit on the leeward side, the Mar de Dentro; the Atlantic-facing coast takes the swell and is worked far less often. Everything lies close enough together that a skipper can rewrite the plan mid-morning if the wind swings, so whole trips are rarely lost outright.

Dolphins are usually met from the boat rather than underwater: the bay where the spinner pod rests is closed to swimmers, and watching happens from the deck or the clifftop lookout above it. On the reef, turtles are habituated enough that they barely shift as you pass, rays cross the open sand, and jacks and barracuda hold in the current lines off the points where the water accelerates.

It suits divers who want an unhurried week with long visibility rather than a technical one, and who accept the cost: beds are limited, boat space is finite, and prices run well above the mainland. The deep and overhead options amount to a handful of dives rather than a programme, so anyone chasing depth or a long wreck list runs out of menu quickly. Travelling with non-divers is easy, though: there are enough trails, beaches and surface boat trips to fill the days nobody spends underwater.