Nöbetçi Eczaneler
Graeme Gourlay rediscovers the pleasures of uncrowded reefs and day-boat diving at the purpose-built, but charming, Egyptian resort of El Gouna
Words by Graeme Gourlay
Egyptian day-boat diving is a treat. It was on such boats that I first became hooked on diving. The ease of it all, the quality of the reefs, the stunning marine life, the lunches, the mix of people on board, the friendly crews, the hour-long journeys out to the sites and back again, with time to contemplate the meaning of life and top up your tan … sheer bliss.
I had forgotten quite how much I enjoyed this well-oiled routine. For nearly 20 years, I had been lured away by liveaboards to the southern Red Sea and the wonders of Indo-Pacific reefs.
So it was a real delight to return to El Gouna for a week of diving and find that, if anything, things had got even better.
Much was reassuringly familiar – rolling up at a leisurely 8 am to an extremely well-run dive centre, being directed to your boat for the day, exchanging friendly greetings as you slipped off your shoes, then checking that your kit was neatly stowed beneath your tank (which are now available with the added bonus of nitrox).
The boats themselves look much the same – mostly painted white and measuring just under 30 metres in length to avoid a punitive tax hike if they were any bigger.
There is the usual layout: a lower dive deck and saloon, where lunch is served later in the day, and a top deck where you can stretch out, read or simply doze in the sun.
One change I did notice, however, was that it all felt less crowded. Much busier were the other boats packed with day-tripping snorkellers. Chatting to other regular Red Sea divers confirmed that this now seems to be the trend.
The divers were the same sort of mix of ages and nationalities as I remember. On this day, a Finnish family with two teenagers finishing their rescue diving course while their parents enjoyed leisurely reef dives, a few Germans, one Swiss woman and two French divers.
The biggest difference was that there were fewer of us than the often crowded jumble of 20 or more divers crammed on the same size boats I frequented in Sharm and Hurghada back in the day.
That meant much smaller groups underwater – eight at most on one morning, but more often six or four. Another striking difference was that all the dive guides were local Egyptians, and the pride and care they showed for their underwater playground was a joy to see.
As we approached our first site, Careless Reef, my heart sank a little. A veritable armada of boats was already moored there. But my smile returned when we motored past the gaggle of day-trip boats and tied up far away at the southern tip of the reef – the only dive boat in sight.
And that, more or less, was how it went all week. Only once underwater did I come across divers from another boat, and only rarely were we moored alongside anyone else.
Diving these still-excellent, relatively healthy reefs in such solitude felt like a new experience. Even on most liveaboards, you are usually in the water with a far bigger group than the three or four others I was diving with here.
And the day-boat guides were more than happy to let you dive at your own pace, rather than ushering you round on the regimented tours I remember from years past.
Considering that many of these reefs have been dived regularly for more than 40 years, and that they are visited by boats from both El Gouna and Hurghada, 25 kilometres (15.5 miles) to the south, as well as the occasional passing liveaboard, it is remarkable how healthy they remain.
The distance between El Gouna and Hurghada brings another advantage, too. Over the years, Hurghada has been transformed from a small, sleepy port with one or two hotels and a handful of dive centres into a tourist metropolis lined with scores of often vast package- holiday hotels.
While the crowds, traffic jams, hustle and bustle might be the perfect holiday for some, it certainly isn’t what you are looking for underwater on a dive trip. Some reefs are shared by both resorts, but many of the best near El Gouna are rarely visited from Hurghada.
It also means that trips to the much- loved Abu Nuhas wrecks, farther north in the Red Sea, are significantly shorter – more than an hour less each way, meaning you can get there earlier.
For many divers, that alone is reason enough to choose El Gouna over Hurghada. A group of divers I met from Birmingham had moved the base of their annual pilgrimage eight years ago from downtown Hurghada to El Gouna for exactly that reason, returning each year to dive the wrecks of Carnatic, Giannis D and Chrisoula K.
They are wonderful wrecks: scenic, straightforward to dive and rich in atmosphere. And if you do not want to commit to a liveaboard, El Gouna is by far the best base from which to experience them.
The resort itself is unique – the dream of an Egyptian multimillionaire, Samih Sawiris, who decided to turn an empty stretch of desert coastline into his vision of the perfect holiday enclave.
Starting in 1989, he has created a slightly strange private world of luxury hotels, villas, man-made lagoons, marinas, and golf courses that now stretches along nearly 12 km of the Red Sea and attracts more than a million people a year.
Many are rich Egyptians from Cairo who own modernist villas and moor their impressive yachts in the three marinas. The 18 hotels cover the gamut of chi-chi boutique hotels in cute but slightly ersatz waterside villages to sprawling top-end golf resorts with luxury spas and sumptuous buffet dining for hundreds of guests.
It is a private world with strictly controlled entry, with staff bused in or living in grim-looking blocks of flats. But few modern-day tourist meccas are what we romantically and naively like to consider authentic or real.
From Las Vegas to the island of the Maldives, from Dubai to the eco-lodges dotted around the Pacific, they have all been built to service the booming business of global tourism – now one of the biggest industries on the planet.
And El Gouna does that very well, keeping golfers, divers, and, increasingly, kite surfers coming back for more. The bars and restaurants are excellent. In fact, I had one of the best curries I have ever eaten in one of the quayside restaurants.
The hotels are impeccably run – I stayed in both The Sheraton Miramar and the Steigenberger Golf Resort, and both were impressive. Corralling tourists into purpose-built, controlled worlds makes a lot of sense.
The punters get what they want – sun, pampering and fun – and perhaps it takes a bit of pressure off ‘real’ places such as Venice and Barcelona, overrun by tourists.
However, one element I did find particularly weird was the vast man-made lagoons dotted around the resort, which are almost devoid of any marine life. Many have existed for more than 30 years but contain little more life than a smattering of algae.
When a curious dolphin decides to venture in from the open ocean to investigate, it gets no more than 50 metres in before making a rapid U-turn and heading back out to the safety of the sea.
Although I rate El Gouna well as a compact and enjoyable self-contained resort, rather like the confused dolphins, I was much happier heading out to sea and enjoying some of the best day-boat diving Egypt has to offer.
Graeme was diving with the excellent Scuba World Divers’ 5 Star PADI centre in the Sheraton Miramar Hotel. To learn more about El Gouna, visit
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