Egypt's Red Sea Coast: Hurghada, Marsa Alam and the Reefs

Hurghada is the coast's biggest resort, a town strung out along the shore rather than gathered round one centre. El Dahar, the old quarter in the north, keeps a souk and local restaurants; Sigala, south of it, is the tourist district of hotels, dive centres, bars and seafront cafés. Beyond Sigala the resort strip runs south along the coast road past the airport, and guests at its far end can spend a week without seeing the town. Shared minibuses run along the main roads and taxis wait outside the hotels, with the fare agreed before getting in. Alcohol is served in the resort hotels and in Sigala's bars.

Much of Hurghada's snorkelling and diving lies offshore, and day boats leave the harbour every morning. The Giftun islands, a protected area a short ride out, are the classic day: snorkelling stops on the surrounding reefs and time on an island beach, while glass-bottom boats show the coral to those who would rather stay dry. The wrecks of the Strait of Gubal — the four ships lost on the reef of Abu Nuhas, and the Thistlegorm — are reached from Hurghada on long day boats and on liveaboards, as they are from Sharm El-Sheikh. On every reef the rule is the same: touch nothing, stand on nothing, and keep fins clear of the coral.

El Gouna, about 20 km north of Hurghada, is a privately developed resort town laid out around lagoons and canals, with many of its hotels and houses on their own stretch of water. Its small downtown of restaurants, bars and shops and its marina lie close enough together to walk between in the evening. Dive boats leave the marina for the same reefs as Hurghada's, and the north wind that blows across this coast most of the year has made El Gouna a kitesurfing centre, with schools for beginners.

South of the airport the coast road passes a chain of resort areas, each built as a resort rather than grown as a town: Sahl Hasheesh, a planned resort with a long seafront promenade; Makadi Bay; and Soma Bay on its headland, where the wind draws kitesurfers too. Safaga, further south, is a working port with its own offshore reefs, dived by fewer boats than Hurghada's, and a windy bay long known to windsurfers. It is also where the road to the Nile Valley turns inland, and Luxor is a long day out by road from this coast.

El Quseir, between Safaga and Marsa Alam, is the coast's historic port, where grain from the Nile Valley and pilgrims bound for Mecca once took ship for Arabia. Its Ottoman fort stands near the seafront, and the lanes of the old town behind it make a quiet afternoon's walk. Resorts line the coast north and south of the town, several of them above their own reef, and Marsa Alam's airport is nearer to them than Hurghada's.

Marsa Alam itself is a small town; the name mostly stands for the long coast around it, where resorts sit alone beside the coast road, often many kilometres apart. Its international airport (RMF) lies north of the town beside Port Ghalib, a marina development that is the nearest thing this coast has to a centre. Days here turn on the hotel and the sea: there is little to walk to, and many resorts face a house reef or one of the sheltered inlets, the marsas, whose name runs through the place names of the coast, so diving from the shore is a large part of the diving.

Off the coast from El Quseir to Marsa Alam lie the reefs that draw experienced divers. Elphinstone, a long, narrow reef north of Marsa Alam reached by day boat, has walls that drop into deep water and currents that can run hard, and hammerheads and oceanic whitetip sharks are seen there in season. The Brothers, two small islands far out to sea, and the lone reef of Daedalus further south are protected areas reached only by liveaboard, on trips of several nights to a week from Port Ghalib and the other harbours of the coast. These are open-sea dives without shelter, and boats usually ask for advanced certification and a log of earlier dives.

South of Marsa Alam the Fury Shoals, a cluster of offshore reefs reached by day boat or liveaboard, rise into shallow water that rewards snorkellers as much as divers. Sataya, one of them, is a large reef enclosing a lagoon where spinner dolphins rest by day after hunting offshore at night; snorkellers float at the surface and let the dolphins come, never chasing them. Shaab Claudia, another of the shoals, is known for its caverns and swim-throughs.

On the shore south of Marsa Alam, Wadi el-Gemal National Park protects the coast, offshore islands and a broad desert valley that runs back into the mountains. Mangroves grow along parts of its shoreline, and this stretch is among the least developed in the governorate, with long empty beaches between the few resorts. The Ababda, the desert people of this region, live in and around the park.

Behind the coast the Red Sea Mountains rise out of a gravel desert, and evening trips by jeep or quad bike from Hurghada and Marsa Alam end at a desert camp with dinner, tea and a night sky with almost no light below it. Deeper in, about 50 km inland from Safaga and reached by four-wheel drive, Mons Claudianus is the Roman imperial granite quarry that supplied columns for the Pantheon in Rome; abandoned columns, the quarry faces and the walled settlement where the workers lived still stand in a remote valley.