Red Sea with kids - Hurghada, Marsa Alam or somewhere else?

[UFOrb]

For a hotel house reef we found it really good, saw several turtles, an eagle ray, lots of blue spotted rays and my wife and son were lucky enough to see a whale shark cruising past!

Wow! Sounds great and I hope we have some of your wife & sons luck!

Funnily enough, we recently booked a package deal with Tui and will be staying at a nearby hotel, the Resta Reef. It works out much cheaper than booking flights & hotel separately, which we normally do. I would’ve preferred to have stayed within the bay but there are shallow lagoons to snorkel in front of Resta Reef if the jetty’s closed due to waves. I’m hoping we’ll be able to walk around and snorkel the bay too. Do you know if it’s possible to cut through to the bay?

ScubaWorld Divers are based at the hotel and get good reviews but I’ll check out Coraya Divers too as they seem to offer a lot of diving options.

Thanks for the info.

Cheers,
Rob

 

[scubajasonr]

You can definitely walk into the Coraya complex from the southern end (Where the Resta hotels are) but I am not sure if you can walk out of the Resta Hotels by the edge of the sea. There is a bit of wasteland in-between, when we were there they were just starting some building works around there so may have changed by now. It is too hot to walk far in July/August so we didn't explore on land much.

Getting to Marsa Alam is fairly expensive as TUI and Thomas Cook are the only flight options and seem to keep the price for flight only very high. So like you we have found it cheaper to book as a complete package. We did book separately a few years ago, and flew via Hurghada with Easyjet but the transfer is a bit tedious.

They saw the whale shark just outside the southern end of the bay at about 18m, so not far from the Resta hotels. It had been sighted around there for a few months over the summer, I think it was last seen in September. Hopefully it will back next year.

 

[scubajasonr]

Not a great picture, but this is the best my wife got of the whale shark.

A better picture of a turtle in the bay.

 

[UFOrb]

Getting to Marsa Alam is fairly expensive as TUI and Thomas Cook are the only flight options and seem to keep the price for flight only very high. So like you we have found it cheaper to book as a complete package. We did book separately a few years ago, and flew via Hurghada with Easyjet but the transfer is a bit tedious.

We’re going in April. Only Tui fly to Marsa Alam from London airports from April to Sept for some reason - perhaps Thomas Cook think they won’t sell hols/flights as it’s too hot? We did consider flying to Hurghada and transferring to Safaga or El Quseir but when I saw the Tui deal it was a no-brainer for the price (effectively less than £200 for 10 nights all inclusive family room & transfer after taking off the price of flights if bought separately), particularly with such a short transfer from the airport. And I was more keen to dive in Marsa Alam.

I think April’s a bit early in the year for whale sharks but ya never know I guess!

 

[diverLux]

Hi,

I have just returned from El Quseir staying at the Calimera Akassia Resort, the water park must be a dream world for children, there is also a man-made shallow lagoon at the beach, safe for toddlers.

There are 2 pontoon one on the North side and the other 400 meters South, divers and snorkelers go from N to S. Wonderful Dive are on site, if the sea gets rough Wonderful Dive have another base at the Rohanou Beach Resort, 15 minutes away and here you dive the protected house reef Serib Kebir.