Malta - Scuba diving and more
Malta is an Eurpean islands state, located in the center of the Mediterranean Sea between the North African coast and Sicily from which it distances only 80 Km. It actually comprises of three islands, Malta, Comino and Gozo with a population of less then 500k people on 316 square Km.
Malta has an extremely rich history, starting from amazing prehistoric misterious temples till the WWII, passing through several invasions and the famous knights od Saint John's ruling.
We just spent two weeks of our summer vacation in Malta where we equally divided our time between diving and sightseeing with just only few beach days in between.
Diving is mainly from shore, the coast has very attractive and scenographic sea bottom landscapes with plenty of caves, fractures, arches and walls. There are lots of wrecks, some sunked on purpose within the maximum recreational depth limit of 40 meters and others, generally deeper, as consequence of WWII battles or bad weather.
On the contrary to our expectations, the marine life is quite various and abundant, actually it is one of the most alive bottoms we saw in the Mediterranean Sea.
Diving is not only the main touristic attraction but it is also the national hobby, especially tec diving. In fact lots of Malteses take a dive as soon as they can to visit the deeper wrecks of reefs. We have been told that in Malta there are more than 200 CCR (read rebreathers) divers.
Malta is definetly one of the most attractive diving destination in the Mediterranean but it is not only about diving because Malta and Gozo have so much to offer in terms of sighteeing. There are lots of museums, historical sites and natural spots all over the islands. Valletta, Rbat and Vittoria are must see cities together with the prehistoric temples.
In two weeks we have been able to see only a small portion of what the two islands have to offer but we went to the most iconic dive sites.
You can get an idea of what we've experienced by watching the videos we took during our vacation, on our YouTube playlist dedicated to Malta and Gozo.
Malta is definetly a nice and convinient touristic destination with excellent opportunites for divers and non divers.
The prices of real estare are not excessively expensive but not cheap either. At the present there are a lot of construction activities on going and the future availablity of houses will substantially increase in the next coming years and that could likley lower the average properties' cost; something to monitor in the future.
There is only one negative side for our Project Calypso: there is a winter season and local people we met confirmed that is quite normal for coldest days to reach 10C deg. Not a freezing winter but much colder than what we are looking for.
For this reason, we would not consider Malta as our primary choice for the plan B.
Next year our summer vacation will be dedicated to Lanzarote, the other potential plan B destination.
Stay tuned.
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