Sharm El Sheikh — Ras Mohammed

Diving here runs on a day-boat timetable. Boats load early at Sharm el Maya, Travco Marina or the Sharks Bay jetty, cross to the park or the strait, and fit two or three dives around a cooked lunch on deck before turning back in the late afternoon. Ras Mohammed has been a national park since 1983 and charges a per-diver entry fee; anchoring is out, so boats tie to fixed moorings and pick divers up downcurrent rather than waiting at the line. Trips to the northern wrecks leave hours earlier, and several operators sell them as a one-night safari so the hull can be dived before the day fleet arrives.

The three dive areas feel different underwater. Inside Ras Mohammed the headline dives are walls: a shallow reef top ends abruptly, the drop-off runs into open water, hard coral on the shoulder and current along the face, though sheltered corners are gentle coral slopes by comparison. The Straits of Tiran hold four reefs strung across a shipping channel, Jackson, Woodhouse, Thomas and Gordon, each dived as a drift down one flank with the mooring at the sheltered end; the freighter Loullia still stands aground on Gordon, a landmark of the strait since 1981. Closer to town, Ras Umm Sid, the Gardens and Temple are sloping coral and pinnacles, dived when wind shuts the crossings.

Two dives shape a week. One is the wreck day: repeat visits to a single hull, a surface interval spent working out what you swam through, and usually a pass over the two locomotives blown clear onto the sand. The other is the current dive at Tiran or on the Ras Mohammed corner, holding on the blue side of the reef and watching what comes past. The debris scattered on the slope there is cargo from the Yolanda, a freighter lost in 1980 whose bathroom fittings still litter the reef while the hull itself slid into deep water.

Sharm suits divers who want variety without changing base. The town carries a lot of dive centres, from budget operations to technical schools, and the same harbours serve a first Open Water course on sheltered local reef and an early boat out to the exposed corners. It works for mixed groups, since resorts, restaurants and desert trips absorb people who are not diving. The trade-off is company: the best-known moorings fill up around the middle of the day, and anyone who dislikes full boats and fixed schedules will notice.