Ranked first on this section’s own list of what actually goes wrong here — above the stomach, the reef and the road, and a long way above sharks. Why a coast this windy burns people who never burn at home, and where heat exhaustion stops and heatstroke starts.
This is number one on our own list of what actually goes wrong here — above the stomach, above the reef, above the road, and a long way above the shark attack that brought most people to the safety section in the first place. It is also the only thing on that list nobody packs for, because everybody already believes they know how sunburn works. The reason careful people still get caught on this coast is not carelessness. It is that almost every signal your body uses to tell you to get out of the sun is switched off here.
The sensation that makes you move into the shade is heat on skin, and a constant sea breeze removes it completely. This is the single biggest reason people burn here rather than in southern Europe: you are not uncomfortable, so nothing tells you to stop. On a boat it is worse again, because the apparent wind is higher and the deck is moving air across you all day.
Face down for an hour means the backs of your legs, your lower back and the back of your neck take an unbroken hour of near-vertical sun, while the water keeps you cool enough to feel fine. The classic first-day case on this coast is not a sunbather; it is somebody who had a lovely three hours on a house reef and could not sit down that evening.
Open water reflects a meaningful share of the light that hits it, and pale sand does the same. Sitting under a beach umbrella on a bright day is genuinely not full shade — you are still taking reflected light from every direction, which is why people burn in places they were sure were covered, and why shade alone is not a plan on a boat.
This coast sits at about 27 degrees north. Around midday for much of the year the sun is close to overhead, which shortens the path light takes through the atmosphere and means the middle of the day is disproportionately stronger than the morning. The practical consequence is that an hour at one o’clock is not the same as two hours at nine, and treating them as interchangeable is how a day goes wrong.
In dry desert air sweat evaporates the instant it appears, so you never feel wet and never register the loss. That is what makes heat exhaustion arrive quietly here — as a headache and a short temper rather than as obvious overheating — and it is why the water you drink on a boat or a desert trip has to be deliberate rather than responsive to thirst.
Redness that appears hours after the exposure rather than during it, which is why the beach felt fine. Bad cases blister, and a burn severe enough to blister across a large area is a burn worth showing to a doctor rather than a pharmacy.
If it happens: Out of the sun, cool the skin, drink more than feels necessary, and cover it completely for the rest of the trip — burnt skin burns again faster. Egyptian pharmacies are excellent and are the right first stop for anything ordinary.
Headache, tiredness, feeling sick, dizziness, cramps, heavy sweating, clammy pale skin. The person is still sweating and still making sense. On this coast it usually arrives as a bad mood and a headache on a desert trip or a boat, and gets blamed on the early start.
If it happens: Get them into shade or air conditioning, get them horizontal with their legs up, cool them with water and airflow, and get fluids into them slowly. It should improve within half an hour. If it does not, treat it as the next line.
The signs change rather than intensify, and that change is the emergency: confusion, slurred or strange speech, no longer sweating, hot dry skin, a seizure, or loss of consciousness. Somebody who has stopped making sense is not a worse case of heat exhaustion — it is a different thing.
If it happens: This is a medical emergency. Call for help immediately — the emergency numbers are on the practical page and every hotel has a doctor on call — and cool them aggressively while you wait: out of the sun, clothing off, water and air on the skin. Do not wait to see whether it improves.
A long-sleeved UV top does not wash off, does not need reapplying, does not get missed in patches, does not end up on the reef, and removes the entire back-and-shoulders problem that snorkelling creates. It is the single most useful thing in the bag, for adults as much as for children.
Roughly eleven to three in summer is not a period to manage, it is a period to be indoors or in the water for. Egyptian families already run on this rhythm — out early, inside in the middle, out again from four — and adopting it makes the same holiday feel twice as long instead of half as pleasant.
Sunscreen is applied about half as thickly as the tested amount by almost everybody, and swimming and towelling take off most of what is left. A phone alarm every two hours is unglamorous and works better than any product decision you can make in a pharmacy.
Tops of the feet, the parting in your hair, the tops of the ears, the back of the neck, the backs of the knees, and the strip under the edge of a swimsuit that moves when you swim. A hat solves three of those at once and is the cheapest decision on this page.
Thirst lags the loss in dry air, and a boat combines wind, salt, reflected light and a long day away from a tap. Take more water than looks silly. This is also the single best thing you can do about a headache that starts around three in the afternoon.
Two common chemical UV filters, oxybenzone and octinoxate, are the ones most often named in coral-damage research, and several places around the world have restricted them. "Reef safe" and "reef friendly" are not regulated terms and any product may print them, so the label alone is not an answer — the ingredients list is. Mineral filters, zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, are the usual alternative. The genuinely reliable version of this is the one that is also better for you: cover up. A rash vest puts nothing in the water at all, which is why the dive centres that care about the reef push clothing rather than a particular bottle.
This is general guidance from people who live here, not medical, legal or security advice. For anything acute, get a doctor — the coast has good clinics and decompression chambers. Before you travel, check your own government’s current advice, and once here, follow local beach closures and dive-centre briefings: they know about today’s conditions, and this page cannot.