Red Sea · Sep 23, 2026

El Gouna by boat: the town built on lagoons

A planned resort town, seen the way it was designed to be seen

El Gouna is the strangest town in Egypt, and the quickest way to understand why is to see it from the water. It is a resort town built across a chain of man-made islands and lagoons, half an hour up the coast from Hurghada, and it does not look, sound or feel like anywhere else in the country.

What El Gouna actually is

It is worth being clear about this before you go, because it changes what you make of the place. El Gouna is not an old Egyptian town that grew. It was planned and built from nothing, privately, as a resort town — the canals were dug, the islands were made, the architecture was designed to a single scheme in sand-coloured Nubian-influenced forms.

The result is spotless, low-rise, quiet, and almost entirely without the noise and improvisation that make an Egyptian street an Egyptian street. Some visitors find that restful and some find it airless. Both reactions are reasonable, and knowing which you are before you book a half day there is useful.

El Gouna's lagoons

El Gouna's lagoons

The lagoons, by boat

This is the part that justifies the trip. El Gouna's districts are separated by water, and the way locals cross town is a little shuttle boat rather than a taxi.

Gliding through the lagoons at eye level with the waterfront houses is a completely different experience from driving past them — the town was laid out to be seen from the water, and from a road it just looks like nice villas. Half an hour on a shuttle boat explains the entire place.

El Gouna Tower

A short climb to the one panoramic view, and the moment the geography makes sense: the chain of islands, the channels between them, the lagoons going green to turquoise to deep blue, the Red Sea on one side and the desert mountains on the other.

It is worth doing early in the visit rather than at the end. Everything you look at afterwards means more once you have seen the shape of it from above.

The view across the islands

The view across the islands

Downtown and Abu Tig Marina

Downtown is the pedestrian heart: pastel lanes, cafés with chairs in the street, small shops, and enough shade to sit outside in the middle of the day. It is designed, obviously — but it works, and it is the one part of El Gouna that feels like a town rather than a development.

Abu Tig Marina is where the yachts are, and it is the other extreme: glossy, expensive, and busiest in the evening. Egyptians from Cairo come here for the weekend, which makes it one of the few places on this coast where the crowd is not mostly foreign.

Abu Tig Marina

Abu Tig Marina

Getting there without a tour

El Gouna is around twenty-five kilometres north of Hurghada and a taxi will get you there in about half an hour. There is a scheduled bus between the two as well.

The catch is what happens once you arrive. The town is spread across islands, and the interesting way to cross it is by water — but the shuttle boats are not obvious to somebody turning up cold, and they are not signposted for visitors. People who drive themselves up tend to see the marina, have lunch and leave, without ever getting on the water, which is the one thing actually worth going for.

The wind, which matters more than you would think

El Gouna is one of the best kitesurfing places in the world, and the reason is that it is reliably windy. The same wind that makes the lagoons a kite school makes the shuttle boat breezy and the tower exposed.

Practically: bring something with sleeves even in summer, and expect the water crossings to be choppier than a lagoon looks like it ought to be. If you kite, or want to learn, this is the place on this coast to do it — and it deserves its own days rather than a corner of a half-day tour.

What else is there

Kite and windsurf schools, several of them, among the best regarded in the region.
An eighteen-hole golf course, which is a strange thing to find in the Eastern Desert and is exactly the kind of strange El Gouna is.
Restaurants with actual range. This is the one place on the coast where eating out is a reason to travel rather than something you do at your hotel.
A film festival each autumn, which fills the town and the hotels — worth checking against your dates either to catch or to avoid.

On money

El Gouna is the expensive corner of the Red Sea, and it is expensive in a specific way: the tour itself is a normal half-day, but a coffee, a lunch or a beer downtown costs what it would cost in Europe rather than what it costs forty minutes away in Hurghada.

That is not a reason to skip it. It is a reason to eat before or after rather than assuming you will find the usual Egyptian prices when you get hungry.

With children

El Gouna is one of the easier half-days on this coast for a family, for reasons that have nothing to do with attractions.

The lagoons have no waves and no current, the shuttle boat is a boat ride that lasts minutes rather than hours, downtown is pedestrian so nobody is holding a hand near traffic, and there is shade and a lavatory within a short walk of wherever you are standing. Compared with a full day at sea, all of that is a lot less to manage.

The tower is the one stop small children get nothing from. It takes ten minutes and somebody can stay at the bottom.

Half a day is the right length

Four hours, which sounds short and is correct. El Gouna is small, the stops are close together, and the town does not have four hours of things to see — it has about three hours of things to see and a very pleasant hour of sitting down, which is most of the point.

It pairs well with a Hurghada day rather than competing with one: the lagoons in the morning, back for the afternoon. It does not pair with a boat trip, because both are on the water and the second one always feels like a repeat.

What time of day

Morning is the default and it is right most of the year: the light on the lagoons is better, the tower is bearable, and downtown has shade before the sun is overhead.

Late afternoon is the alternative and it is the better one in high summer — you lose nothing but the tower's clarity, and you gain Abu Tig as it actually is, which is an evening place. If you can only do one and it is July, go late.

Who it is for

Go if you are curious what a purpose-built resort town looks like when it is done well, if you like architecture, or if you want one afternoon on this coast that is calm and tidy and has no hawkers in it.

Skip it if what you came to Egypt for is Egypt. El Gouna is many good things and it is not an insight into the country — the old town of Hurghada will tell you more about how people here actually live, and it costs a fraction as much.

Most people who go enjoy it more than they expected and would not want a second day there. That is roughly the right reaction.