Safaga

A port before a resort

Safaga is a working town. The port was founded in the 3rd century BC, between 282 and 268, under the name Philotera, after the late sister of King Ptolemy II. Today it is still the main export port for phosphates mined nearby, and a ferry links Safaga with Duba in Saudi Arabia, used in particular by pilgrims bound for Mecca. The south of the town is taken up by the port and its lorries; the beaches are to the north.

That is what sets Safaga apart from its neighbours: a town of more than 50,000 people where tourism is one activity among others, with a few hotels, dive centres and guesthouses. The Egyptian tourist board highlights its white quartz sand beaches, to which soothing properties are attributed, and Safaga also presents itself as a centre for therapeutic tourism. The town hosted the 1993 Red Sea World Windsurfing Championships and has three windsurfing centres.

To stay, Sabaro recommends Soma Bay, the neighbouring peninsula to the north, where the hotels in its selection are: Safaga's dive centres and excursions are a short distance away.

The offshore reefs

Safaga's dive sites are offshore, reached by boat, and mainly suit divers who already have a few dives behind them:

• Panorama Reef: walls dropping to more than 200 m and huge coral formations. Its "Anemone City", more than forty anemones and their clownfish between 14 and 5 m, serves as a safety stop at the end of the dive. When the current runs south, it makes for a drift dive.
• Abu Kafan: a narrow reef about 300 m long, with walls of more than 300 m covered in soft and black corals and gorgonians. Jacks, tuna, barracuda and reef sharks are seen here, sometimes hammerheads.
• Middle Reef: a north face sloping to 30 m, then dropping sheer; to the south, shallow caves and tunnels, with groupers, pufferfish and sweetlips.

The Salem Express. This ferry, which ran between Jeddah and Safaga, struck a reef on the night of 14 to 15 December 1991 and sank; several hundred passengers died. The wreck lies at a depth of about 32 m. Entrances to the interior were welded shut to protect the site as a grave, and some local guides refuse to take divers there. Sabaro advises those who dive it to stay outside the hull, touching and taking nothing.

Safaga has a decompression chamber. Dive with insurance that covers diving and repatriation, and check the centre's supervision and equipment.

Towards the Nile and the Eastern Desert

Safaga is the start of the 164 km paved road that crosses the desert to Qena, in the Nile Valley. Luxor is therefore about 230 km away, a little over 3 hours by car, roughly an hour less than from Hurghada. Daily buses, including those of the Go Bus company, link Luxor and Qena with Safaga in 3 to 5 hours.

On this road, about 40 km from Safaga, a turn-off leads along about 25 km of broken track to Mons Claudianus. This Roman quarry, worked from the 1st to the mid-3rd century, supplied the granodiorite, a grey rock close to granite, for the columns of the Pantheon's portico in Rome and for Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli. Sabaro recommends going with a driver who knows the track, and returning before nightfall: driving at night outside towns should be ruled out.