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Excursions and day trips from El Quseir

Our most recommended things to do in El Quseir

El Quseir is the oldest port on this coast and still looks it. Pharaonic expeditions to Punt are thought to have sailed from near here, Roman ships used it, and for centuries it was the harbour Egyptian pilgrims left from on the way to Mecca. The Ottoman fortress in the middle of town has been restored and is worth an hour; around it are coral-block houses, a working fishing harbour and a seafront that has almost no tourism on it at all. The hotels are strung out along the coast north and south rather than in the town.

This is the quiet end of the Red Sea, 140 kilometres south of Hurghada, and people choose it for the diving. The reefs here see a fraction of the boat traffic of the Giftun sites, much of the good coral is reachable straight off the shore, and several of the hotels are built around their own house reef rather than a marina.

The distances inland are the thing to plan around. Luxor is roughly three and a half hours by the desert road through Qift — long, but the road is quiet and the Valley of the Kings is comfortably a single day. Cairo is too far to drive: we fly guests from Marsa Alam or Hurghada. What El Quseir does have, and almost nowhere else does, is the Eastern Desert on its doorstep — the Roman quarry settlement at Mons Claudianus, the old caravan road to the Nile, and Bedouin country that sees very few visitors. If you came here to get away from the resort coast, those are the days worth taking.

El Quseir Excursions & Day Trips | Helios Travels