Diving in Safaga

Safaga is a calm port town on Egypt's mainland Red Sea coast, roughly 60 kilometres south of Hurghada. Divers stay in town or along the Soma Bay resort strip just north and reach the reefs on standard day boats from the marina. The diving splits cleanly in two. Behind Safaga Island lie sheltered coral gardens and pillar clusters, shallow, calm and good for training, with Tobia Arbaa, the Seven Pillars, the pick for beginners, photographers and night dives. Out in the open sea sits the exposed offshore line. Abu Kafan is the headline here, a current-swept wall often called a little Elphinstone and rated the area's best dive, with the best odds of reef sharks and a late-spring hammerhead window. Panorama Reef is the more forgiving drift, a sheer wall with a gorgonian forest and reliable napoleon wrasse. Above all of it stands the Salem Express, the passenger ferry that sank off the town in 1991 with hundreds lost, dived today as a solemn memorial rather than an adventure. Safaga draws divers who want Red Sea reef-and-wreck diving without the crowds of Hurghada or the wildlife circus of Marsa Alam. It is also a leading kitesurfing bay, and the same wind that suits the surfers can close the offshore sites and send the boats to the sheltered gardens.

Diving here runs on a day-boat rhythm: an early boat from the marina, two dives with lunch aboard, back at the dock by mid-afternoon. Hurghada International is the airport, about 50 to 60 kilometres and under an hour away, in the same charter catchment as Hurghada itself. Several independent operators work out of Safaga town and the Soma Bay resorts, a mix of small in-town shops and resort-affiliated centres, and Nitrox is widely available for the deeper offshore profiles. Match sites to your level and the weather. The sheltered Tobia and Gamul gardens dive in almost any conditions and suit beginners, while Abu Kafan and Panorama need calm seas and drift comfort and come off the menu in wind. The best window is spring and autumn, with late spring for hammerheads and winter for the slim manta chance. Pack a couple of extra kilos of lead for the high salinity, and approach the Salem Express as a place to pay respect.

A large bay partly sheltered by Safaga Island, fringed by inshore coral gardens and shallow pinnacle clusters, fronting a line of exposed offshore reefs and walls whose vertical faces drop hundreds of metres. On land the area is known for black sand and mineral springs.