Hurghada Marina

The waterfront promenade at the centre of Hurghada, and the departure point for most of the boat trips along this coast. A curved quay of moored yachts and dive boats, with a pedestrian strip of restaurants, cafés and shops running behind it.

It is at its best in the evening. The daytime marina is a working harbour — engines, ice, fuel, tour groups assembling — but once the boats are back and the light drops, the promenade fills up and stays busy until late.

What it is good for

• Boarding — snorkelling boats, dive boats, Orange Bay and Giftun departures, private charters
• Eating — seafood by the kilo is the local speciality; pick your fish and pay by weight
• An evening walk — the full promenade takes about twenty minutes end to end
• Sunset — the western end looks back over the water towards the mountains

Prices on the marina strip are noticeably higher than a few streets inland, and the further from the water you eat, the more local the bill.

Hurghada barely existed a century ago. It was founded around 1905 as a base for oil prospecting on the Red Sea coast, and for decades it was a small fishing settlement of a few thousand people, isolated by desert from the Nile valley.

Diving changed everything. From the 1980s the reefs drew European visitors in rapidly increasing numbers, and the town expanded along the coast at extraordinary speed — from a few thousand residents to several hundred thousand within a generation, with a string of resorts running twenty kilometres north and south.

Built for the boats

The marina itself is recent, developed in the 2000s as the town moved upmarket and needed somewhere to berth larger craft. It replaced an older working harbour, and it was designed as much for walking as for mooring — which is why the promenade, unusually for Hurghada, is genuinely pleasant on foot.

The mosque at the end

The El Mina Mosque stands at the northern end of the waterfront, its two minarets and white domes the most recognisable landmark on the seafront. It is a modern building in a traditional style, and the contrast with the yachts moored in front of it is Hurghada in a single view: a fishing port that became a resort inside one lifetime.