By type of trip
Nile Cruises Luxor to Aswan: Routes, Boats and Prices
Classic Egypt Tours: Cairo, Luxor and Aswan Itineraries
Nile Cruise and Red Sea Holidays: Two-Week Egypt Trips
White Desert Tours from Cairo: Oases and Desert Camping
Short Breaks in Egypt: Three and Four Day Cairo Trips
Tailor-made Egypt Tours: Private Trips Built Around You
Red Sea
Marsa Alam is the southernmost of Egypt's three main Red Sea resort areas, and the list of things to do there is short and almost entirely wet. That is not a criticism. The reefs are the best of the three and much of what you would pay a boat for elsewhere sits within swimming distance of the beach here. But the list runs out, and it runs out faster than the brochures admit, so this page ranks what is actually here, says what each thing involves, and names the ones we would not book.
Start with the geography, because it decides everything else. Marsa Alam is not a town you stay in. It is a small working place with a fishing harbour and a few shops, an airport well to the north of it, and a long strip of coast either side, with hotels sitting in their own compounds kilometres apart along a single desert road. There is nothing in the town for visitors, and there is nothing to walk to from most hotels. The activities are therefore the reef in front of you, the boat days you buy, and the desert behind you, in that order of value.
Ranked honestly, the list goes: snorkelling or diving straight off the house reef, which is the best thing here and the cheapest; the seagrass bays at Marsa Mubarak and Abu Dabbab, where green turtles graze in shallow water; a boat day to the reefs north or south of the town; Wadi el Gemal, if you want empty desert and Roman ruins rather than wildlife; El Quseir or Port Ghalib for an evening that involves walking somewhere; and the night sky, which is free and better than most visitors have ever seen. Below that the list thins quickly into things sold at the hotel desk that mostly exist to fill an afternoon.
The word Marsa Alam causes real confusion when you are booking any of this. It is used for the town, for the airport and for a long stretch of coast on both sides of it, which is why two hotels described identically can be several hours apart. A marsa is simply a bay, so the marsa names on an excursion list are places on the shoreline rather than resorts. Before you judge any activity on this page as near or far, find out where along that coast you are actually staying. Our full guide to the coast, its four zones and the transfer times sits on the Marsa Alam destination page, linked below.
This is the strongest single argument for Marsa Alam over anywhere else in Egypt, and it is the one thing on this list that needs no booking, no licence and no guide. A good share of the reef here sits within a few metres of the surface, and at many hotels you can reach it straight from the beach. Snorkellers see most of what the divers see on the shallow sites: coral heads in genuine condition, reef fish in real numbers, and turtles grazing over the seagrass in the sheltered bays. It is also the part of an Egypt trip that most reliably exceeds expectations, largely because expectations for it start low.
The catch is that not every beach has a reef in front of it. Some properties sit on a fringing reef you can swim off, some on a sandy bay with no coral at all, some have a channel cut through the reef flat and marked with buoys, others a jetty running out to the drop-off. Hotel photography is no help whatsoever here. Email the dive centre on the property and ask what the entry is and what is in front of it. That single reply will shape your week more than the star rating, the buffet or anything a review site tells you.
A few practical points that separate a good week in the water from a sore one. Reef shoes, because the shallows here are coral and stone rather than sand, and because sea urchins, fire coral and well-camouflaged stonefish and scorpionfish live on shallow reef flats. A rash vest or an old t-shirt rather than repeated sun cream on your back, which is better for you and better for the coral. And go at your own pace rather than chasing a guide's fins: a reef flat in half a metre of water is the easiest thing in the sea to damage by accident, usually with a kick you never noticed you made.
Several bays along this coast have seagrass beds in shallow, sheltered water, and Marsa Mubarak and Abu Dabbab are the two most visitors are taken to. Green turtles graze there and are seen most days, which is about as close to reliable as wildlife gets anywhere. This is the excursion that families should put first, because it works with a mask and a snorkel rather than a tank, the water is calm, and a six-year-old who has watched a turtle feed a metre below them remembers it for years.
Manage the conditions rather than the expectations, though, because the two get confused. These bays are shallow and sandy, and the water in them is often cloudy, nothing like the clarity you get on the reef walls. People who arrive straight from a postcard are briefly disappointed before they realise what they are looking at. Go early, before the hotel groups arrive, both for the light and for the numbers. If you are staying within reach, a bay like this is better done twice at eight in the morning than once at eleven with four boats already moored.
Conduct matters here more than at any other site on the coast. Keep your distance, stay off the fins-first pursuit, and do not position yourself between a feeding animal and the surface. Crowding these animals has been a real problem along this coast, and a guide who lets you chase one is not a good guide and should be told so. The rules have tightened over the years, which is a good thing rather than a nuisance: some bays are zoned, boat numbers and entry points are controlled, and guides are expected to brief you before anybody gets into the water. Take that briefing seriously.
Dugongs are the animal Marsa Alam is sold on, and the honest position is that they are not an attraction, they are a chance. There are very few along the whole coast, they move, and any operator promising you one is selling something they cannot deliver. If a trip is priced or named around a guaranteed dugong, that alone tells you what kind of operation you are dealing with. Book the bay for the turtles and the seagrass, treat a dugong as the thing that occasionally happens, and you will come home content rather than cheated.
There is a second reason to hold that line, which is that the pursuit is what does the damage. A dugong harried off its feeding ground simply leaves, which is how a bay stops being worth visiting at all, for you and for everyone who books the same trip next season. The scramble of boats and fins when one appears is not a pretty thing to be part of. If you do get a sighting, hang back further than feels natural and let it feed.
The same principle applies to Sha'ab Samadai, the horseshoe reef sold as Dolphin House, where spinner dolphins rest during the day. The lagoon is zoned and you cannot enter the core area where they sleep, which is correct and should not be argued with. Some days you see them from the boundary and some days you do not. The reef itself is pleasant and busy. Book it as a reef day with a possible bonus, and it is a fair afternoon. Book it as a dolphin encounter and roughly half the time you will feel sold to.
Marsa Alam was developed much later than Hurghada, whose inshore reefs have carried day boats since the 1980s, and its reefs started their tourist life decades behind. It shows in hard coral cover, in the amount of anchor damage, and in how many other groups you share a site with. This is the honest reason divers come south, and it holds up. The practical consequence is that many hotels sit on a reef you can swim to, so a day's diving needs no boat at all, and where you do take one the run is often twenty minutes rather than an hour.
The dive centre is usually a separate business renting space from the hotel, which means the hotel's star rating tells you nothing about it. Judge it on its own terms. How many divers does each guide take underwater? Does it run a check dive before anything serious? Does it ask to see your logbook, and does it ask what you have dived recently rather than only what card you hold? The centres that never ask are the ones to avoid. Look at the state of the rental kit and look at whether the boat carries oxygen. None of this requires expertise, only the willingness to stand there and look.
Two pieces of admin that people leave too late. Standard travel insurance often excludes diving altogether, or covers it only to a shallow depth limit, and treatment for a serious decompression injury is expensive: buy specific dive cover. And flying after diving decides your last day for you, since training agencies advise a surface interval before you fly, commonly at least twelve hours after a single dive and longer after several days of repeated diving. Count the domestic hop to Cairo as flying. Plan a week around four or five diving days rather than seven and you will not spend the holiday watching a clock. Our diving in Egypt page, linked below, goes through all of it.
Elphinstone is the name on every brochure on this coast: a long offshore reef out from the coast north of the town, with steep walls down both sides and a plateau at either end. It is dived as a drift, in current, with open water below you. When it is on, it is one of the best dives in Egypt and the reason a good number of people fly here rather than somewhere cheaper. It is also the site divers most often find themselves out of their depth on, in both senses of the phrase.
Be blunt with yourself about experience. This is not a dive for a fresh open water card, nor for somebody who last dived three years ago on a resort course. A good operator will ask about your recent diving before they take you there, and the ones that do not ask are telling you something about how they run everything else. Oceanic whitetips are more likely here in autumn, which is part of the draw for experienced divers and part of the reason the briefing matters. Incidents are rare, and the standard advice is dull and worth following: never feed fish, stay with your group, and do exactly what you were told on the boat.
Elphinstone is also among the first sites cancelled when the wind gets up, which happens often enough that you should not build a trip around one dive. If it is the reason you are coming, give the coast enough nights that two blown-out mornings are an inconvenience rather than the end of the plan, and treat a hotel house reef as insurance rather than a luxury. It is what turns a cancelled boat into a dive instead of a wait by the pool.
South of the town the reefs improve again and see fewer people, and this is the part of the coast that rewards staying further down it. Fury Shoals is a scattered complex of shallow reefs, coral gardens and swim-throughs that suits ordinary recreational divers well: no great depth, no drama, and a lot of coral in good condition. Sataya, at its southern end, is another horseshoe reef where spinner dolphins rest, and it works on exactly the same terms as Sha'ab Samadai further north.
Beyond those sit the exposed offshore reefs that southern liveaboard routes exist for: deeper, with genuine current and a real chance of sharks. Those are not day trips from a hotel beach, whatever is pinned to the noticeboard by the pool, and a trip sold to you as one is either mislabelled or going somewhere else. Reef sharks, for what it is worth, are an ordinary sight on the southern reefs, and for many divers that is a large part of why they came.
Much of this coastline sits inside protected areas, and where a park fee applies it is normally collected on the boat on the day rather than added to what you booked. Carry small cash for it, and for the tips that are a real and expected part of how a day boat works here rather than loose change. Card acceptance thins out quickly beyond the hotel desk. Our pages on how much cash to take to Egypt and on tipping cover the amounts.
A liveaboard is a boat you sleep on for roughly a week, diving three or four times a day and moving between sites overnight. Port Ghalib and Hamata are the two southern departure points, and these routes are a large part of why divers fly to Marsa Alam rather than Hurghada at all. A liveaboard reaches reefs no day boat from a hotel can get to, and it removes the travel time from the front and back of every day, which over a week is worth more than the extra sites on paper.
It also puts you in a small cabin, out of phone signal, with a dozen strangers and nothing to do between dives but eat and sleep. If that sounds like a bad week, it will be one. Southern routes are the more demanding half of Egyptian liveaboard diving as well: stronger currents, deeper sites, drifts in open water. Operators set a minimum experience level for them, and a first liveaboard is no place to argue about it.
If you are travelling with somebody who does not dive, a liveaboard is close to unworkable, and a hotel with a proper house reef is the obvious answer instead. That mixed group is the common case on this coast and the place is set up for it: one of you takes the day boat in the morning, the other swims off the beach, and you meet for lunch. It is a better week for both people than a compromise that traps the non-diver on a boat.
Wadi el Gemal starts south of the town and runs inland: a protected area of dry mountains, gravel plains, mangroves and offshore islands, with Ababda families still living and herding in it. The draw for most people is Sikait, where the Romans mined emeralds, the main source in their world, leaving shrines cut into the rock of a narrow valley. Standing in a worked-out Roman mine with nobody else in it is a genuinely different thing from anything else available on this coast, and it is the reason to take the day.
Be clear about what the day actually is, because this is where people are most often sold the wrong picture. It is hot, dusty and long, with big empty stretches between anything. Gazelle and ibex are in the park but you are unlikely to see them. You need a 4x4, a guide and park permission, so it cannot sensibly be done independently: it is a protected area, the tracks need the vehicle, and there is nothing out there if something goes wrong with it. Ask who is driving and whether an Ababda guide comes along, because the versions of this day that are worth doing tend to be the ones that do.
Go because you want quiet desert and ruins with nobody standing in them. If what you are picturing is a game drive, skip it and spend the day in the water instead, and do not let anybody sell you the wildlife version of it. The shorter half-day desert trips that run inland into the hills are the same idea at a fraction of the commitment, and some operators run evenings with Ababda families. Those are worth doing when they feel like a visit rather than a performance, and you can usually tell which you are being offered from the way the trip is described.
El Quseir, up the coast to the north, is the nearest thing to an old town on this shore: a Red Sea port with centuries of trade behind it, an Ottoman-era fort above the harbour and a small, low-rise waterfront. It is a half-day out rather than a destination, and anyone expecting a Nile-valley monument will be underwhelmed. But it is a real place in a way the resort strip is not, and if you are staying in the northern zone it is close enough to be worth an afternoon rather than a trek.
Port Ghalib, just south of the airport, is the other option and a completely different proposition: a purpose-built marina development with a promenade, shops, restaurants and liveaboard berths. It is the one place on this coast where you can walk somewhere in the evening, which some people need by day three and others never think about. It is pleasant and it is manufactured, and it does not pretend otherwise. A good deal of what is sold as Marsa Alam actually happens there.
Outside the hotel gate, behaviour changes at that line and it is worth knowing before you step through it. Swimwear around the pool and on the hotel beach is completely ordinary and nobody gives it a thought. Walk out to a shop, a pharmacy or a taxi and you are in working Egypt, where it is not. Ordinary clothes off the property is simple courtesy, costs you nothing and saves a certain amount of unwanted attention on both sides. Our guide to what to wear in Egypt goes into the detail.
There is almost no artificial light along this coast and the air is dry, so on a moonless night the stars are about as good as most visitors will ever have seen them. It costs nothing, needs no guide, no booking and no 4x4, and it is a better use of an evening than the hotel entertainment, which on this coast is rarely the reason anybody came. Walk away from the pool lighting, give your eyes twenty minutes to adjust properly, and lie down rather than crane your neck.
It is also the answer to the complaint people most often have about Marsa Alam, which is that the evenings are empty. They are. The coast has no market to wander, no bar strip and no choice of restaurants within walking distance of most properties, and no amount of positive framing changes that. What it has instead is a sky, and the guests who enjoy this coast most are the ones who work out by the second night that the emptiness is the product rather than a fault in it.
Worth booking: a boat day to a shallow reef, the seagrass bays for the turtles, and Wadi el Gemal if the desert appeals on its own terms. Those three are the honest core of the list and they are what this coast is for. When you book a boat trip, ask one specific question before you pay, which is whether it actually stops on shallow reef. Some trips are built around deep sites where a snorkeller floats above blue nothing for an hour and wonders what the fuss was about, and the answer is not always volunteered.
Not worth booking, in our view: anything sold as a guaranteed animal encounter, the deep offshore sites presented to inexperienced divers as a normal day out, and any day trip whose driving time exceeds its content, which on this coast is a longer list than it sounds. Distances turn everything into an excursion here. There is no walking to a chemist, no strolling out for dinner, no nipping into town for an hour. A taxi has to be arranged and paid for in both directions, because it will not find another fare waiting out there for the return leg.
Plan the week on the assumption that you are staying put, and treat anything else as a proper day out with a cost attached. That is not a limitation to work around so much as the correct mental model for the place. Two or three organised days across a week, with the rest spent in the water in front of the hotel, is the shape that leaves people happiest. Five organised days leaves them tired and out of pocket, having spent a good part of their holiday in a minibus on a desert road.
This is the excursion most often sold and the one we would most firmly turn down. Luxor from Marsa Alam means leaving before dawn, four to five hours each way across the desert via Edfu, and three sites walked through in the heat with a long drive still ahead of you. It is a poor way to see one of the densest concentrations of ancient building anywhere on earth, and it is a poor day out on its own terms: roughly ten hours in a vehicle for perhaps four on the ground, most of them at the worst hour for tombs.
The sites themselves deserve better than that. The Valley of the Kings is cut into rock with no airflow and should be done at opening, not at noon after a four-hour drive, and Karnak is not one temple but a walled precinct that around thirty pharaohs added to across two thousand years. Two hours there is the realistic minimum and three is better. A day trip gives you a fraction of that, in the heat, with a coach waiting.
Give Luxor a night or two, or leave it for a separate trip. If the ancient sites are genuinely part of what you want from Egypt, the right answer is not a day trip from the coast but a different shape of holiday altogether, with the Nile at the front of it and the sea at the end. The next section covers what that looks like and what it costs.
The shape that works is sightseeing first, sea last. Fly into Cairo, do the pyramids and the museum, take the Nile between Luxor and Aswan, then cross to the coast and finish there, flying home from the sea rather than making a second crossing of the desert. Nobody wants a 4am start after a week of doing very little, and the appetite for temples runs out before the appetite for warm water does. Two weeks is the length this really wants; ten days can be made to work if you cut Aswan short, but you will feel it.
One honest disclosure about our own trips. None of the sixteen itineraries we sell puts its Red Sea leg in Marsa Alam: they use Hurghada, which is three to four hours up the coast by road and roughly four hours from Luxor across the desert, and which has far more flights and departure days. Cairo, Luxor and Hurghada in eight days starts at US$2,040 per person before international flights, a Nile cruise and Hurghada in ten days at US$2,310, Cairo, a Nile cruise and Hurghada in eleven days at US$2,560, the thirteen-day version of the same trip at US$2,945, and the sixteen-day grand tour of Egypt at US$3,910. If the reef is what you are here for, say so when you enquire and we will price the coastal leg in Marsa Alam instead.
If you would rather keep the two halves separate, the river on its own is the cheapest way into Egypt we sell: four days on the Nile from Aswan to Luxor starts at US$840 per person, which leaves the coast for a different holiday entirely. That is often the sensible split for divers, who want a full week in the water rather than three nights of it bolted onto a temple trip. Our Egypt itinerary guide sets out the common shapes.
The water is warm all year, roughly high twenties Celsius in late summer and low twenties in midwinter, so there is no closed season and no month where the sea is off the table. Most people want a 5mm suit in January and February. Air temperatures from June to August are punishing, which effectively deletes the desert half of this list for those months and leaves the sea as the only comfortable place to be. That is not the disaster it sounds like here, but it does mean Wadi el Gemal and the inland trips are summer activities in name only.
Wind is the variable that actually edits your list. A northerly blow is normal on this coast and stronger in winter, and when it gets up the exposed offshore sites go first, sometimes several days running. March to May are the windiest stretch. December to February give mild days, genuinely cool evenings and the thickest wetsuit of the year. September to November hold the warmest water, the calmest run of days and the best odds of the offshore sites running as planned, which makes autumn the answer if you can pick your dates freely.
Plan for the cancellation rather than hope against it. A week with a house reef in front of it survives a blown-out morning; a week built entirely on boat days does not. If you want the detail month by month, our best time to visit Egypt page covers the whole country, and the month pages for September, October and November cover the window we would pick for this coast.
It works well, with two caveats. The sheltered bays are calm and shallow, journeys once you have arrived are short, and a week in one place with a pool and a beach is exactly what small children want out of a holiday. The turtles in the seagrass bays are the single best thing on this list for a family, because they can be seen with a mask and a snorkel rather than a tank, in water calm enough for a child who has never snorkelled before.
The first caveat is the reef flat. A fringing reef with a jetty over it is not a paddling beach, so toddlers need either a genuinely sandy bay or a hotel with a protected lagoon, and you have to establish which you are getting before you book rather than after you land. The second is the sun. Midsummer air temperatures are hard on small children, and the light coming off water and pale sand burns faster than most people expect. Cover up rather than rely on reapplying cream.
Plan around the transfer as well, because it is the part families most often get wrong. A charter landing late at night followed by a two-hour drive south is a miserable start to a week, and the same drive at the other end will cost you the last morning. With young children, pay whatever premium is required for a hotel nearer the airport and spend the hours you save in the water.
It suits divers first and keen snorkellers second. It suits people who are content to stay in one place for a week and who read the emptiness as the product rather than a deficiency. It works for families with young children who want a calm bay and short journeys. It works as the last leg of a Nile trip, when what you want is to stop moving. And it suits anyone who found Sharm el-Sheikh or Hurghada too busy and wants the same sea with a tenth of the people in it.
It does not suit short breaks, because the flight schedule and the transfers eat too much of them, and many routes fly once a week, which quietly fixes your trip at seven or fourteen nights. It does not suit anyone who wants a market, a bar or a choice of restaurants within walking distance, because there is none and no amount of planning produces one. And it does not suit the traveller whose real interest is ancient Egypt: that is on the Nile, hours away, and a day trip will not do it justice.
The clearest test is a simple one. If you took the sea out of Marsa Alam, what would be left that you wanted? For a diver the answer is still a good week. For someone who does not much like being in the water, the answer is a hotel compound, a desert road and a long drive to anything else, and Hurghada or El Gouna will serve that person better. There is no shame in the second answer, and it is far cheaper to reach it before booking than after.
Yes, but not much, and you should know that before you book. The desert is the main alternative: Wadi el Gemal with its Roman emerald workings at Sikait for a full day, or shorter half-day trips inland. El Quseir to the north has an Ottoman-era fort and a small waterfront, and Port Ghalib has a promenade you can walk in the evening. Beyond that the list is genuinely short, and the stars are the best free thing on it.
At many hotels, yes, and it is the best thing the place offers. Some have a reef table you cross by jetty or ladder, others a sandy lagoon with a marked channel out to the drop-off. But not every beach has a reef in front of it, and hotel photographs will not tell you which. Email the dive centre on the property and ask before you book, because a sand-only bay changes your week from swimming out to waiting for a boat.
Green turtles graze the seagrass in those bays and are seen most days, which is as close to reliable as wildlife gets. Dugongs are not. There are very few along the whole coast, they move, and any operator promising you one is selling something they cannot deliver. Go early, before the hotel groups arrive, and expect cloudy water in the shallows rather than reef-wall clarity.
No. Elphinstone is a drift in current along steep walls with open water below you, and it is the site people most often find themselves out of their depth on. A good operator will ask about your recent diving rather than only your card, and one that does not ask is telling you something. It is also among the first sites cancelled when the wind gets up, so never build a trip around one dive there.
We would not book it. Luxor is four to five hours each way across the desert via Edfu, which means a pre-dawn start, around ten hours in a vehicle and a few hours on the ground in the worst of the heat. The Valley of the Kings wants an early morning and Karnak wants two to three hours on its own. Give Luxor a night or two, or leave it for a trip built around the Nile.
It depends entirely on why you are going. If diving or snorkelling is the reason for the trip, Marsa Alam is the better buy: healthier reefs, fewer groups, and often a reef you can swim to. If the water is a side interest, Hurghada wins on flights, departure days, package price and having somewhere to go when the hotel palls. Our comparison of the three Red Sea resorts runs through the trade-off in more detail.
Seven is the practical minimum, and the flight schedule often decides it for you since many charter routes run once a week. Divers who want the southern reefs should think about ten to fourteen, because the far sites need full days and wind will take one or two of them away. Two or three organised days in a week, with the rest spent in the water in front of the hotel, is the shape that leaves people happiest.
Take cash. Card acceptance thins out quickly beyond the hotel desk, and park fees on the protected sites are normally collected on the boat on the day rather than added to what you booked. Tipping is a real and expected part of how a day boat works here. For entry you need the full Egyptian tourist visa: the free Sinai-only permit issued to some arrivals at Sharm el-Sheikh does not exist on this coast and would be no use here, since the Red Sea coast south of Suez is mainland Egypt rather than Sinai. See our page on the Egyptian visa on arrival and e-visa, and confirm the current rules before you fly.
Entry rules, opening hours, security advice and exchange rates all move. Check them at the source, not here.
Written and checked by the Nile Trip Guide editorial team · Last reviewed . Entry rules, prices and opening hours change — check anything critical against the official sources linked on this page.
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8 days · Classic Egypt
The route most people take first, at the length it was built for: Giza and the Grand Egyptian Museum, then a flight to Luxor and four nights sailing down to Aswan.
from US$2,135 / per person
8 days · Nile & Red Sea
No boat on this one. Giza and the Grand Egyptian Museum, a night in Luxor for both banks, two nights on the Red Sea, then back to Cairo for the Citadel, Coptic Cairo and the Royal Mummies.
from US$2,040 / per person
10 days · Classic Egypt
Five nights in Cairo either side of a four-night sail from Luxor to Aswan. The Cairo days are private, just your party and a guide; the sightseeing off the boat is shared with a small group.
from US$2,635 / per person
