I am finally back from a week of sun and sea and had the opportunity to dive in one of the top 3 diving spots in the world.
The Maltese archipelago consist of three islands. Malta, Gozo and the smaller Comino. All three these islands are inhibited and lie only 93km South of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea.
As you will see on the inserted map, there is plenty of wrecks around the islands to accommodate divers and it takes less than 2 hours with good traffic conditions to drive from the one side of the island to the other side. The other good news is that the Maltese are highly educated and for that reason drive on the correct side of the road like we do in good old South Africa.
I would not recommend driving to the dive sites as road signs can be tricky to decipher and the boat trips with a local dive master is only around 10 euro p/p. There is plenty of dive shops on the island, so you can find out from each what they have to offer and compare their prices.
I opted to stay in St Julians (Sliema area) where you have all the tourist attractions and night live of the island. If you prefer something more quite and relaxed away from the shopping hub, I would recommend staying towards St Pauls Bay, which is more North towards the "tail" of the fish.
The Dive shop by the Westin Draganora resort is number one in Europe and you will get friendly and professional service, without feeling that you have to pay for it. Dives to be covered in short will be HMS Maori, P31 Patrol Boat, Bristol Beaufighter and the Comino Caves.
The first dive we made was the wreck of the British destroyer, HMS Maori, in St Elmo's Bay towards Valletta. The Maori was a 115m long destroyer with 8 x 4.7 guns, 4 x 21 torpedo tubes and a crew of 190. She sank two Italian destroyers during the end of 1941 and was finally bombed in February 1942, while she was moored in Grand Harbour.
In 1945 she was cut in two pieces and the forepart was towed to St Elmo's Bay, where she lies about 14 meters deep.
