Favorite location in Red Sea

[chillyinCanada]

I traveled to Egypt this past May by myself- 37 yr old female. Flew into Sharm and did a week long liveaboard with the King Snefro Fleet, specifically the Pearl. I went directly to the boat to depart the next morning and when we returned to port booked a nice hotel for three nights to just relax. I LOVED it. My only surprise was the water temp, which was about 74-78 degrees. I dove every dive offered and was good in a full 5mm with a 3/5mm hooded vest underneath and 5mm boots. I also tend to get cold easily. By the 4th day I was heading to my cabin for a hot shower/rinse after the dive and heading up to the deck to sunbathe. I thought the DM's did great, the diving was awesome, the food was very good, and the trip size of 12 divers was perfect. My only complaint was bottom times ranged from 30-45 min, which I get for wrecks and some of the deeper dives. I felt frustrated diving the reefs and having to come up at 35 min with 2000lbs of air. BUT I would do it again in a second! I lucked out and had my own cabin and think I paid 899Euro for the whole trip. I wasn't a huge fan of wrecks, but knew I had to to Thistlegorm if I was going to the red sea- defn do not miss. The "wrecks and reefs" route on Snefro Pearl was the perfect combo for me. If I did it again I would go when water temps were warmer, maybe June?

I felt safe everywhere except the Cairo airport- that felt kinda shady to me, but being a blonde female solo traveller was totally fine everywhere else. I'm also somewhat city saavy, so I didn't go wandering around alone in Sharm, but did visit the major staples solo with no problems.

I would 100% do the southern reefs if I was to book again, out of Marsa Alam, but only to see schooling hammerheads and larger animals. One of my friends from the liveaboard went back and did the southern route a few months later and saw TONS of sharks.

I did a lot of research on what to pack for my first liveaboard and that was a big help to me.

I was also quite uncomfortable as a solo female in the airport and it was night. The hotel shuttle that was to pick me up, wasn't where it was supposed to be as per the email of instructions that I'd been sent. I had trouble finding anyone who spoke English but that is not on them.
Eventually, I had to breakdown and take a taxi. It went well.

There was an unrelated problem at the hotel but I won't get into that here.

 

[Neilwood]

I don’t know much about Red Sea diving, but am considering a first time live aboard trip there. Would you suggest northern or southern Red Sea? Best location to depart from? Live aboard company to go with? What time of year? When you give your preferences, please give your reasons.

Depends a lot of what you want to see and how comfortable you are in various conditions such as surge/currents.

I have been on a couple of different trips and both had their highlights:
Wrecks and reefs - you get to see a lot of the reefs close in with a lot of life on them as well as doing a number of dives on various wrecks. Great for variety as you will end up doing a bit of everything with some drift dives as well.
Simply the Best - primarily a southern route and, while there are wreck dives it tends to focus more on looking for the larger pelagic species such as sharks, tuna etc. Probably slightly more adventurous diving than Wrecks and reefs.

I really enjoyed both but I did feel that on the Simply the Best itinerary there were a few dives where we were pretty much blue water diving with the reef wall barely in sight so you need to be comfortable maintaining depth and orientation without visual references.

My preference would be Wrecks and reefs possibly because we actually dived on the Thistlegorm on the 75th anniversary of its sinking which was quite special (we were lucky to only have another 3 boats on it so at most there were only one other group diving it but the dives had been coordinated by the skippers so the two groups weren't doing the same sections of the boat at the same time).

I should add that I did wrecks and reefs with only about 25 dives under my belt and did the Simply the best with around 50.