Piedra del Hombre

The wall runs south from the foot of the Punta de la Mona cliffs, and the dive starts on it at 4-6 m, over small stones with the rock on your left. Damselfish, salemas and wrasse fill the first minutes. Next comes a band of brown algae, where slowing down is how divers find a seahorse, with luck. Large rocks with coralline growth follow, holding serranids and small groupers, and mojarras and sargos thicken in the water on the approach to the seca.

The pinnacle stands about 30 m from the cliff and rises almost to the surface. At 14 m it rests on very fine sand and is richly covered in orange coral and spirograph worms, with fry, sea bass and amberjack out in the blue and cerianthus on the sand around it. At 18 m an arch between two large stones turns the dive back along a shallower line, past crevices that hold conger, moray, forkbeard and small slipper lobsters (santiaguinos). Looking back at the rock on the return, divers pick out the outline of a man's face with a pronounced aquiline nose, which gives the place its name.

Piedra del Hombre fits a complete route into a shallow band: a wall, a separated pinnacle, an arch, and a return that stays shallow. The colour sits on the pinnacle, where the orange coral is dense enough to change the look of the dive after the muted algae and stone of the start. The way back is slower, over rock formations at around 10 m, including a large rock that breaks the surface and gathers a good deal of fish.

Most of the dive sits well inside Open Water depths, so a diver who is still building experience gets a pinnacle, an arch and a shaped route in one tank.

Nudibranchs are the macro draw. An operator calls the site an excellent area for observing them, violet sea slugs and Flabellina affinis are among the species named, and photographers who have posted from this rock describe a large variety within one dive, some on a single stone. The pinnacle's orange coral gives colour for close work, and spirograph worms stand out of it. One diver notes that the rock lies in the sun in mid afternoon.

The pinnacle can be busy, so go early. Photographers working a single subject here share the rock with other groups, and an early entry gives you more of it to yourself.

In the brown-algae band, slow down. The seahorses live there, and it is the part of the dive that most divers swim past.