Interesting trip. We went in early June 2022. Sharm el Sheikh is a strange place. I didn’t know much about it prior to going there. The Reef Oasis hotel was probably 30% full, and many of the others around it were closed or totally vacant. I think Bluewater made the right choice in recommending the Reef Oasis, because at least there were some guests there (mostly Italians), and a few divers. The other one run by the same dive club was much emptier. There were zero other Americans there (or anywhere else we visited), and people seemed to think that it was very strange that we were visiting. Overall, the Reef Oasis was a nice hotel, and the staff tried very hard. It was quite comfortable.

Diving was strange at first, because we were expecting something like the last place we were at, which was very busy. Here, the hotel dive center looked deserted, and no-one else was there when we showed up to arrange dives. However, the dive instructor was good and it was nice to just dive with the two of us and one instructor, which would have never happened at a busy resort. There is a reef right off the beach which is quite good, and we did several dives off the shore there.

They did have boat trips, and we went to an area called Ras Mohammed twice. There are lots of dives there. But, since there are not many boats coming from Sharm El Sheikh, there isn’t a lot of choice about what dives you do. We did two exceptional dives (one of them twice) and a few others that were not quite as good. We had hoped to go to some other areas but you don’t have a lot of choices because there is only one boat per day. We were usually the only people from our resort on that boat, as far as I know. The others were from various other resorts.

Interestingly, at one dive site, Ras Za’atar, however, there were many divers and a lot of boats. I think most of those other divers must have been on liveaboards. It made me wonder what it was like when and if Sharm el Sheikh was actually crowded in the past. If all those hotels were full, one would imagine that all the dive sites would be incredibly crowded.

Anyway, it was a bit frustrating not being able to choose boat dives. There were a lot of dives at Ras Mohammed that looked great, but they were not the ones chosen by the boat divemaster on the days we went out. So, we decided to finish up our Advanced Open Water certification, since we could do those dives off the shore. We did that, and also did the enriched air certification.

Overall, it was a really good trip, and I think Reef Oasis was probably the best resort there for diving (even though there were not many divers there). However, I think if one wanted to stay at Sharm El Sheikh, as we did, as opposed to being on a liveaboard, and wanted to do all the interesting dives, one would need to allow at least two weeks, so that you would go out on the boat for enough days to go to all the various sites (Tiran, Dahab, Ras Mohammed, Thistlegorm wreck, etc.).

There are day trips to Luxor available to see the Valley of the Kings (Thebes). That would have been a lot of fun: you leave at 4 AM, fly there, see the sights, then fly back at night. Not too expensive either. Unfortunately they only run that flight once per week and it didn’t fit into our schedule.