Ten nights
Learn to dive in the first half, use it in the second, and keep the last day dry. Built around the eighteen-hour no-fly gap that most published plans ignore.
Day 1
Do not book the course from home. Walk into two or three centres, ask where the oxygen is, whether they want to see your card, and what the group size is. That hour decides the whole trip.
Days 2–4
Three days: theory (less if you did it online before flying), confined water, then four open-water dives. It is tiring in a way people do not expect — early starts, heavy kit, and concentrating underwater.
Day 5
A genuine rest day, and not a wasted one. Sleep, eat, walk. Divers who go straight from a course into a week of boats are the ones who get an ear infection on day seven.
Days 6–7
Advanced is two days and takes you to thirty metres, which is where most of the good Red Sea wrecks actually are. If you would rather not, spend the same two days doing guided dives at Giftun and Abu Ramada instead.
Days 8–9
What the certification was for. The Thistlegorm is a long day and worth every hour of it; Abu Nuhas has four ships on one reef. Both are early starts.
Day 10
No diving. Eighteen hours minimum between your last dive and the flight, and twenty-four is the safer habit after a week of it. Use the day for the town, the market, or the sleep you have not had.
Weather. A windy spell can cancel two boat days in a row, and it usually takes the days you most wanted. Build the plan so the wrecks are not on the last possible morning.