Veril de Fariones

You walk in from Playa Grande or, on busier days, drop off a boat ten minutes out from the old harbour, and you are at the wall in two minutes. The pier-side rock cluster at 5m is the first stop on the way down: a tight aquarium of small life beside the little Fariones pier, busy enough to be its own micro-dive on the way back up. From there the seabed runs out to the lip and falls away. Most recreational profiles settle between 22m and 30m and trace the wall face leftward.

The face is niche-pocketed and encrusted: bright anemones on the rock, a branch of orange coral around the 40m line, leopard sea slugs in the cracks, large dusky groupers tucked into the bigger niches and watching the column. Trumpetfish hold position. Ornate wrasses flash beside the groupers. The 2011 Biosphere Reserve guide calls out the same beat that 2007 dive photographers logged here: the wall hides surprises that take a slow eye to find.

The return is back up the wall to the 5m pier rock cluster for the safety stop. Technical divers go the other direction, dropping past the recreational 40m line into black-coral country beyond 60m, with the wall continuing well past 100m within a short swim of the beach.

Fariones is the line on this coast where shore-diving and tec-diving overlap. The 2011 official guide names it the steepest near-shore slope on the Canary Islands and the reason Lanzarote built a reputation as Spain's technical-diving destination: a diver can step off the beach and be in black-coral country within minutes. Few Atlantic sites compress that whole gradient into one shore-entry plan, from the pier-side snorkel shallow through the recreational wall face to the technical fall-off below.

For recreational divers the appeal is the texture of the wall itself rather than a single landmark feature. The face combines a working depth full of large groupers with a 5m rock cluster overhead that the official guide describes as "practically an aquarium." Older dive logs and centre briefings still attach the name Felix to a recurring resident grouper, and the wall remains a long-standing photographer's site for the same reason: large fish that tolerate close approach against a dark volcanic backdrop, with macro along the cracks.

Plan a depth ceiling before you descend. The wall keeps going past 40m and the gradient makes it easy to drift a few metres lower than intended; a hard number on the computer is the simplest defence. Nitrox is worth the supplement on the working face and most Puerto del Carmen centres carry it. Bring a torch for the niches and for colour on the wall at depth. Currents are usually mild but tide-driven pickup happens, so check the forecast and carry an SMB for the ascent. On boat days the launch is a short hop from the old harbour; on shore days the walk in with gear from Playa Grande / Fariones beach is the price of admission, and the boat option is the standard summer alternative.