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Excursions and day trips from Port Ghalib

Our most recommended things to do in Port Ghalib

Port Ghalib is a marina town built beside Marsa Alam airport, which makes it the shortest transfer in Egypt: for most guests the drive from the aircraft to the hotel is under fifteen minutes. The marina itself is the centre — a horseshoe of moorings with restaurants, an arcaded souk and the hotels set around it. It is purpose-built and makes no pretence otherwise, but it is genuinely pleasant in the evening and easy to walk.

What brings most people this far south is the marine life, which changes character here. Marsa Mubarak and Abu Dabab, both a short drive up the coast, are among the few places in Egypt where dugongs are seen with any regularity, and the seagrass beds there hold large green turtles almost daily. Offshore, Elphinstone is the serious dive of the region — a reef with steep walls and oceanic whitetips in autumn. This is drift and pelagic territory rather than shallow coral gardens.

Inland, Wadi El Gemal national park starts less than an hour south: acacia valleys, Ababda Bedouin settlements, mangroves and the emerald mines the Romans worked at Sikait. Luxor is roughly four and a half hours by the Edfu road, which we usually run over two days with a night on the Nile rather than as one long push. Cairo is a flight, not a drive. If your trip is built around the water, Port Ghalib is the best base in Egypt for it; if it is built around temples, you are a long way from them and it is worth knowing that before you book.

Port Ghalib Excursions & Day Trips | Helios Travels