La Garita

The bottom on the north face is a talus of small rocks, some up to three metres high, falling from two metres to about twelve before it flattens into sand. Certified dives run from a boat, and the anchor goes down off the Acantilado de Viseras at four metres; a start in the Playa Chica zone at five or six metres is described with a free descent and no reference line. The park plan allows entry from shore only for try dives and training in the buoyed area east of the causeway. A low rock wall with overhangs and short swim-throughs runs along one side of the route, open sand along the other. The classic line heads about 80 m from the anchor to a large rock near the Nido, covered in benthic life, whose 50 cm cavity on the north face usually holds a forkbeard and a lobster or two, with cleaner shrimp on the cavity roof among orange coral, sponges and ascidians. Bottom time is generous at this depth, and centres often use La Garita as an early dive before a deeper one at Marroquí or on the wrecks.

Accounts of the dive describe this coast as the island's old anchorage, where Phoenician and Roman ships rode out south-west gales and left millstone-shaped anchors on the bottom. That history sits under a dive that centres use for refreshers after a long break, because the shelter and the shallow profile remove most of the variables that make the rest of Tarifa demanding. The signature is the small stuff: nudibranchs on the rock, banded shrimp, scorpionfish and lobster in the grotto that gives the site its second name.

Macro is the plan. Flabellina affinis is the nudibranch you will meet most, with other species on a good day, alongside spiny shrimp, scorpionfish and pipefish along the rock-and-sand seam. Terrain this low gives wide-angle little to frame, so spend the bottom time on the cavity and the overhangs.

Tarifa's cool Atlantic water holds the bottom at 17-19 C even in summer, so dress for it. La Garita 2 is the one part of the site where the current matters: it often sets the direction and the return point, so agree both with the guide before you leave the boat.