La Pedrosa

The boat moors directly to the islet. Drop down the line to 18 metres on the southwest face and the tunnel mouth is right there, wide and tall enough to swim two abreast. The passage runs straight northeast through the rock for 70 metres, with the ceiling broken open in places so daylight falls in shifts and pools rather than carrying the dive evenly. Two-thirds of the way through, the chimney opens overhead and rises from 22 metres up to 12 metres. This is the moment most divers point cameras up the shaft. After the chimney the passage carries on to the 24 metre exit. From there the boulder field opens north, and confident divers slip down to around 32 metres to look for the larger spiny lobsters that the centres' site write-ups consistently mention. The ascent runs back along the islet wall to the 5 metre safety stop under the boat.

La Pedrosa is a tunnel that behaves like a cavern. Open-roof sections along most of the 70 metre passage keep daylight in the dive even at 20 metres, so the experience is closer to a sunlit chamber than a torch-and-darkness cave. A 2013 visiting diver compared the landscape to Mexican cenotes, and the comparison sticks. The chimney is the second feature: a wide vertical shaft from 22 up to 12 metres, walls coated in red coral, that gives the dive a third axis most coast tunnels don't have. The dual-route design is the third feature. Centres run the tunnel for AOW-comfortable divers and circle the islet on the perimeter for OW divers, so a single boat split between routes works without a site change. The trade-off is fish density, which is lower than the Medes reserve sites offshore. La Pedrosa is a landscape dive.

Bring a torch. The open-roof natural light is patchy, and the red coral colour only reveals itself under a beam. Trim and buoyancy matter here. The walls and ceiling are layered with fragile coral and sponge, and a stray fin kick does real damage along the full length of the passage. If the tunnel is not for you, tell your guide before the dive: the perimeter route is OW-friendly and ends at the same safety stop. The site is on the Montgrí coast, so no Medes reserve permit, quota, or tax applies. Centres often pair La Pedrosa with a Medes-islands dive for a coast-and-reserve double, in which case the reserve tax applies to the Medes dive only. EAN32 is the natural gas choice for the 18-24 metre tunnel and any 32 metre boulder excursion north of the exit.