Egypt
Ras Mohammed
The Sinai desert drops into the Red Sea here, mangroves clinging to the last ledge.
The desert ends abruptly. One moment you are driving through flat, wind-scoured Sinai scrub; the next, sandstone cliffs drop into water that shifts from turquoise to ink-blue within metres. Below the surface the coral walls plunge toward the meeting of two gulfs, and the current brings everything sweeping past.
Ras Mohammed occupies the southern tip of Sinai, established in 1983 as Egypt's first marine protected area. Shark and Yolanda reefs drop in sheer coral walls to over 700 metres, and the upwellings where the Gulf of Suez meets the Gulf of Aqaba feed more than 200 coral species and around 1,000 species of fish — clouds of orange anthias, unicornfish in their thousands, barracuda schooling in tornado columns. On land the park protects mangrove stands rooted in tidal channels at the desert's edge, salt-tolerant trees growing out of bare rock.
Friends
Fill a dive boat between you — Shark and Yolanda in the morning, barracuda stories over Sharm seafood by night.
- The reefs sit at the exact meeting point of two gulfs — the convergence pulls pelagic fish through all year.
- Divers count anthias in clouds and barracuda in tornado columns — the density is the point.
- Four decades of no-take protection let reef fish reach sizes rarely seen elsewhere in the Red Sea.
- From the headland's rise, the desert, the reef flats and two gulfs sit in a single view.
Lunch comes on the dive boat between tanks — the park itself stays restaurant-free.
Back in Sharm the post-dive table is seafood: grilled prawns on a terrace while the day's dives get retold.
Snoopy Island
United Arab Emirates
A rock shaped like a sleeping beagle, ringed by coral where reef sharks patrol.
Archipiélago de las Perlas
Panama
The pearl that dazzled a Tudor queen and Elizabeth Taylor was pulled from these waters.
Ölüdeniz
Turkey
Paragliders spiral down from 1,969 metres to land on a lagoon so blue it looks retouched.
Ishigaki
Japan
Mangrove kayaks at dawn, manta cleaning stations by noon, Yaeyama soba by sunset.
Bahariya Oasis
Egypt
Hot springs steaming in palm groves where golden mummies were unearthed beneath a donkey path.
Dakhla Oasis
Egypt
Medieval mud-brick lanes and carved lintels marooned in the deep desert for eight centuries.
Nubian Villages
Egypt
Houses painted impossible blue and yellow, a language older than Arabic spoken on every corner.
Farafra Oasis
Egypt
Egypt's tiniest oasis, where one man painted every wall and built a desert museum from mud.