Sharm ash Shaykh

At the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, where the Gulf of Suez meets the Gulf of Aqaba, Ras Mohammed is a marine cathedral. Declared Egypt’s first national park in 1983, its 480 square kilometers shelter some of the Red Sea’s most electrifying reefs — vertical walls plummeting 800 meters, coral gardens pulsing with anthias and butterflyfish, and the legendary Shark and Yolanda Reefs, where a shipwreck’s cargo of toilets and bathtubs has become an artificial reef colonized by soft corals. Above water, mangrove channels fringe salt-crusted sabkhas; cracked earth reveals fossilized coral reefs lifted by tectonic shrugs. The park’s name — “Mohammed’s Head” — refers to a wind-eroded cliff resembling a profile. Whether you drift over the Eel Garden at 20 meters, snorkel the shallow fire-coral meadows at Marsa Bareika, or simply stand on the observation deck watching tuna boil the surface, Ras Mohammed delivers the Red Sea in its most concentrated, untamed form.