Sharm el-Sheikh
The Resort That Put The Red Sea On The European Map: A Strip Of Large Hotels Along The Gulf Of Aqaba With Its Own International Airport, Day Boats Running To Ras Mohammed And The Tiran Straits, Year Round Warm Water, And A Town That Barely Existed Before The 1980s And Now Holds Tens Of Thousands Of Hotel Beds · Sharm el-Sheikh, South Sinai
Sharm is the reason most Europeans have heard of the Red Sea. Forty years ago it was a bay with a jetty; now it is a thirty-kilometre strip of large hotels along the Gulf of Aqaba with its own international airport, and the single busiest way into Sinai. The water is the point: warm all year, clear, and within an hour's boat ride of the Ras Mohammed walls and the Tiran straits, which are among the best dives anywhere. Naama Bay is the old centre, now a promenade of restaurants and dive shops; the newer hotels run north through Sharks Bay and Nabq with house reefs at the end of their jetties. Nobody comes here for the town, and the town does not pretend otherwise - it is a built environment of the 1990s onward, designed around hotel gates and shuttle buses. What it does, it does very well and very cheaply, and the diving is world class. Nobody pretends this is the authentic Egypt, and nobody who books a week here is looking for that.
At the southern tip of Sinai on the Gulf of Aqaba, with Naama Bay in the middle and the hotel strip running north to Nabq, Sharm el-Sheikh, South Sinai, Egypt
Not a site with opening hours - a resort town that runs continuously. Dive centres and day boats leave early from Naama Bay, Sharks Bay and the Travco marina and are back mid-afternoon; the reef trips need booking the day before in season. Hotel beaches and house reefs belong to the hotels, and most sell day passes to non-residents. Ras Mohammed and the Tiran straits are national-park water with their own fees collected on the boat, and which reefs may be moored on changes with marine-park rules. The airport takes direct flights from much of Europe, though the routes have come and gone; the road to Cairo is a long six-to-eight-hour run with checkpoints, and the Dahab road an hour and a half north. Taxis and minibuses run the strip at all hours.