Mahmya Island
From $75 / person7 hoursIncludes 5 h at this sight
Giftun National Park · Red Sea
Mahmya Island
Typical visit: 5 h
The long sand spit on the north side of Giftun, inside the national park — a managed beach with shade, a restaurant and a reef that starts a few metres out.
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About
Mahmya is the developed end of Giftun Island: a broad crescent of pale sand on the sheltered north shore, run under a national park concession that caps how many boats may tie up in a day. That cap is the point of it. The beach has loungers, umbrellas and a kitchen doing grilled fish at lunch, and it still does not fill the way the free anchorages do.
The reef sits close in on the eastern side, in two to five metres, and drops away over a garden of porites and fire coral where parrotfish work the rock all afternoon. The swim out is short enough that people who would not board a boat for a reef end up in the water here. Because it is inside the park, nothing is taken and nothing is fed, which is why the fish are as unbothered as they are.
History & background
Giftun was declared a national park in 1995, and the concession that became Mahmya was granted with conditions on boat numbers, waste and anchoring — the reason the fringing reef here recovered while unmanaged sites nearby did not.
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Recommended 5 h here — you can shorten it in the planner.
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From Hurghada: Mahmya Island