Visit Sharm El-Sheikh: Red Sea reefs, wrecks & Ras Mohammed

At Sharm El-Sheikh's airport the hotel bays begin almost at the perimeter, so most transfers are short; holiday bookings are met in the arrivals hall, and hotels send a driver when asked in advance. On arrival, eligible travellers choose between a full Egyptian visa and the Sinai-only permit, which covers the south of the peninsula but not the mainland — Cairo, Giza and the Nile Valley lie outside it — and the choice made in the arrivals hall stands for the whole trip. Within the resort, hotel shuttles and taxis do most of the work. Taxis are unmetered, so the fare is agreed before getting in, and the hotel desk knows what a given run should cost; ride-hailing apps are patchy here, and no plan should depend on one.

Naama Bay is the nearest thing Sharm has to a centre: a sandy bay lined with hotels, with a pedestrian promenade of restaurants, cafés, shisha bars and shops behind it that stays busy late into the evening. Its own reef is decent for snorkelling, but the better shore reefs lie at Sharks Bay, to the north, and Ras Um Sid, to the south, where hotels stand on the cliffs above the reef. Nabq, north of the airport, holds many of the large all-inclusive resorts; it is the furthest from Naama Bay's evenings, and its reef is reached less directly from the beach. Alcohol is served in the resort hotels and in the bars and restaurants of Naama Bay.

The house reefs are the easiest way into the Red Sea: a jetty or walkway crosses the shallow reef flat to the edge, and from its ladder the reef slope drops away below. The reefs at Ras Um Sid and around Sharks Bay are dived from the shore as well as snorkelled, and parrotfish, wrasse and lionfish are around a swimmer within a few metres of the edge. The reef flat is fragile and sharp underfoot: enter only from the jetty or a marked gap, keep fins clear of the coral, and stay near the ladder when a current runs along the edge.

Ras Mohammed is the southern tip of the Sinai, where the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba meet, and its reefs are protected as a national park. The park's signature dive is Shark Reef and Yolanda Reef: on the open-sea side the wall falls into deep blue water, schools of barracuda and jacks often gather off it, and the cargo of the freighter Yolanda — toilets and bathtubs among it — lies scattered across the reef. Divers reach the park on day boats from Sharm. By road it is a short drive south of the resort, and its beaches let snorkellers swim out to the reef from the shore; the park also takes in a mangrove channel and long stretches of desert coast.

The SS Thistlegorm, a British cargo ship sunk in 1941, lies at about 30 metres in the Strait of Gubal with trucks and motorcycles still in its holds. Day boats from Sharm take three to four hours each way, so the day starts before dawn; liveaboards take it in on a circuit of the northern Red Sea. Depth and currents make it a dive for experienced divers, and dive centres usually ask for advanced certification. On busy days many boats moor over the wreck at once, and the earliest dives of the day meet the fewest divers. Liveaboard routes often add the reef of Abu Nuhas, where several more ships lie wrecked, and the Dunraven lies closer to Sharm, near Ras Mohammed.

Much of South Sinai is within a day's reach of the resort: Dahab lies about 90 minutes up the Gulf of Aqaba coast, evening trips into the desert by jeep, quad bike or camel end with dinner at a Bedouin camp, and Mount Sinai is a night excursion of about three hours' drive each way, timed so that the climb reaches the summit at sunrise, with St Catherine's Monastery visited on the way back. Before booking a trip inland, read your own government's current travel advice and Egypt's health and safety basics.