Ras Mohammed National Park

Ras Mohammed occupies the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula, where the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba meet. It was declared Egypt's first national park in 1983.

It is about half an hour from Sharm el-Sheikh and it is the reason serious divers come to this coast.

The reef walls drop almost vertically from just below the surface into very deep water, and the currents that run past them bring nutrients and therefore fish in numbers. Shark Reef and Yolanda Reef, dived as a single drift, are consistently ranked among the best dive sites in the world.

You do not have to dive. The reefs come close enough to the surface that snorkelling from the shore at Shark Observatory or the Mangrove Channel gives you coral, reef fish and often turtles in a couple of metres of water.

The park is also a landscape rather than just a reef — desert running straight into the sea, a mangrove channel, salt marsh, and a small hypersaline lake. Above water it is stark and empty.

The park was declared in 1983 and later extended, in response to the rapid growth of tourism on this coast. It covers both land and sea, and it was Egypt's first national park.

Its position is the reason it works: the headland sits where the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba meet, so deep water and strong currents come close inshore. Those currents feed the reef and bring in the large fish, which is why the diving here is different from the rest of the coast.

The Yolanda wreck, a cargo ship that went down in 1980 carrying a load of bathroom fittings, scattered its cargo across the reef. The main hull slipped into deep water in a storm, but the debris field — including the famous scattered toilets — remains one of the more surreal dive sites anywhere.

Conservation rules are enforced: no fishing, no anchoring on the reef, no collecting, and no touching coral. Mooring buoys were installed precisely so boats would stop dropping anchors through the coral.

• Shark Reef and Yolanda Reef, dived together as a single drift
• The Yolanda wreck debris field
• Shark Observatory, a clifftop viewpoint over the reef wall
• The Mangrove Channel and salt marsh, where the desert meets standing seawater
• Snorkelling straight off the shore at several marked points
• The Hidden Bay and the crack in the plateau left by the 1968 earthquake
• Schooling barracuda and jacks over the drop-off in summer
• The stark contrast of red desert cliff directly above turquoise reef