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IN the wilds of Marsa Alam, Egypt, nothing is familiar. Pastel mountains, a pink, green and yellow pointillist fantasy, soar overhead, scraping the shimmering curtain of the sky. Sand dunes fan out in orderly waves, orange-striped goats feeding between them, and flocks of blue parrots coast by above. Hamada el-Kawy, my guide to this strange land, taps his eyes and points to a purple unicorn grazing on a nearby mountain. Unicorns are famously wary of strangers, but this one hasn’t noticed us yet, its horned head facing the other direction. We make our way toward it, silently, slowly, hoping for a closer look, but it’s no good. It sees us and bolts.

Hamada taps his watch; our time here is limited. We rise, my head breaks through the shimmering curtain, and I inflate my jacket with a whoosh. Hamada pops up a moment later, pulls off his scuba mask and asks, “Good dive?”

Scuba diving is a bit like visiting another planet — in this Red Sea dive, the landscape of fluttering reef walls and pinnacles seemed as unfamiliar as the canyons of Mars. The fish, weird in their color and shape, have been given names that impose our frame of reference on theirs: parrotfish with their beaklike lips, goatfish sporting forked beards, and unicornfish that spar and horn-joust like the beasts of fantasy.

The Red Sea, one of the world’s premier diving destinations, can be reached from Europe by cheap charter flights. The climate is tropical; prices are reasonable. Unfortunately, the most popular resort areas, like Hurghada and Sharm el Sheikh, are also overrun with tourists, the reefs teeming with as many divers as fish. Marsa Alam is farther south, the newcomer on the scene, still offering the serenity and solitude lost by its neighbors to the north. An international airport opened there in 2001, and the area is developing rapidly, but right now it’s at the traveler’s sweet spot: sufficient infrastructure without too many people taking advantage of it.

“It’s the Bahamas of Europe,” said Philippe Natural, who runs Emperor Divers in Marsa Alam and who used to work farther north. Since 2001 he said, “you have one diving center developing after another” in Marsa Alam. “After five years, down here, you’re not going to recognize it.”

I took my scuba certification course in 2002 and hadn’t done a dive since, but I wasn’t worried. I did a refresher after arriving in Marsa Alam, and between the otherworldly trips to the reef, I spent most of the day calculating numbers off nitrogen tables and discussing air pressure’s logarithmic properties. This wasn’t a sport for daredevils. This was playtime for an accountant.

In contrast to the reef dive of my first day, the second day’s site was shallow and offered no pretty landscape — only a two-inch layer of rubbery sea grass along the floor. But that was the draw: white-spotted guitarfish with the ripply heads of manta rays and the dorsal fins of sharks threshed by, hunting crabs that live in the grass. We came across a huge green turtle eating its lunch with what seemed like the grumpiness of a great-uncle who thinks everyone is ignoring him. It took a break from chewing and glided to the surface, two rubbery appendages clinging to its shell like misplaced fins. The turtle’s apparent bitterness was justified; these were not fins but remora, primordial, textureless fish that hitch rides on larger sea dwellers without so much as a by-your-leave.

The other divers circled the turtle, examining him from all angles. But we were shallower than the previous day, and I couldn’t control my buoyancy. I kept putting too much air into my jacket or too little, bouncing between ocean floor and ceiling in slow motion. Finally, when I had used up all my air with this basketball impersonation, the guide for that morning’s dive offered me his extra breathing source. Mortified, I shared his air, clinging to his tank like a remora.

For the afternoon dive, Hamada led us out to a reef facing the open ocean, the sandy floor slipping away like an hourglass. Soon, we were 60 feet down, sea floor invisible in the indigo darkness, ceiling above a faint glow. The other divers peered into nooks of the monumental reef wall, showing one another sea slugs and eels. I, on the other hand, was deeply engrossed in figuring out which way was up. Panicking, I hyperventilated, quickly using up my air, and Hamada had to take me back to the boat early, leaving the others without a guide.

On the boat ride back to the hotel, the other divers discussed the fish they’d seen that day and waxed philosophic about their beloved sport. Naresh Ramarajan, 24, a Stanford medical student who has made more than 180 dives, said that after a while the underwater world begins to feel normal. “You start appreciating the finer details,” he said.

The trip to Marsa Alam, a couple of days before, had been another foray into the foreign. The first leg, a flight 300 miles southeast from Cairo to the city of Hurghada, had felt like leaving Egypt. Huge fortress-cities lined the coast, complete with pool complexes and crenellated turrets more appropriate to Disneyland than the modern Middle East.

From Hurghada, Marsa Alam was a ride of a two and a half hours in a cab — a leather-upholstered station wagon. It zoomed down straight, paved roads, stopping occasionally at police checkpoints, at one of which our driver was ticketed for his hurry. Egypt has made a goal of turning the Red Sea into a new Riviera, and the signs of building are everywhere: half-built Moorish domes, fieldstone walls in progress and lonely, unopened hotels.

Closer to Marsa Alam the desert was bleak gold sand dotted with scrub brush leading to gemstone waters, turquoise with diamond-tipped sapphire beyond. Soon hills interrupted the flats. The differing erosion rates of the various rocks had left long, thin overhangs like great stone coins.

The Coral Beach Diving Hotel was new, and the staff appeared just recently trained, the Western service tossed on like tinsel on a Christmas tree. The pasta chef nervously adjusted his tall white hat every few minutes during dinner, and the waiters, clad in loud orange-and-blue Hawaiian shirts, refilled my teacup every three sips. Even the hot water in the shower came on too fast, scalding in its eagerness to please.

Before 2001, Marsa Alam was a fishing village, with no tourism to speak of. Then an airport was built an hour north of town, mainly served by European charter flights, and hotels cropped up nearby offering packages like five nights and round-trip flights from London for $700.

These days the construction is in high gear, and a new Marsa Alam has appeared across the highway from the old, with shops offering stuffed camels and blown glass instead of the tea and hookahs offered at two coffee shops at the old village’s heart. On the edge of town, the tourist shops rapidly give way to the concrete shells and rebar of new construction — goats run in the streets between the piles of bricks and lumber — and then, suddenly, desert.

For the reefs, the rapid development raises environmental concerns. In Hurghada and Sharm el Sheikh, divers report that some sites are already “dived out” — and with coral plucked for souvenirs, fish have left for more hospitable havens. Hamada, our guide for the first two days, began diving in the area in 1989 and makes special trips with other guides to clean the reefs. On our four dives together, he picked up a plastic bag, a piece of rubber and two weights that had fallen off divers’ belts.

In a strange land, Hamada was a familiar type, the lifelong surfer or bearded Outward Bound guide. His face is dark and bright, with a full goatee and a receding hairline. “If you understand how the reef, the growing, it takes a lot of years,” he said in his rough but serviceable English, pushing wraparound sunglasses up onto his sunshiny pate. “If you love diving, you will be care about that.”

THE last day held a nasty surprise: a cave dive, normally the exclusive province of experts. The guides assured me that these caves were shallow, with occasional openings overhead. If I needed to go back early, one of them would take me, which was exactly what I wanted to avoid. Waiting at the mouth of the cave for the other divers to squeeze through the doghouse-size entrance, I felt a new fear bubble up. Doing my basketball act in there would mean pressing against the cave ceilings, maybe cutting myself on the coral or tangling my air hose. This sport was more daredevil than accountant after all.

But when I swam through, I found myself in a magical underwater palace. Short, tight corridors opened into ballrooms fit for spangled emperors to court their damselfish. Shafts of light streamed down in shifting patterns like stained glass brought to life.

A deep purple wrasse, an 18-inch fat-headed fish, ushered me through the passages, waiting patiently at my side when the line of divers backed up. Hovering between floor and ceiling, I was completely weightless, neither sinking nor rising unduly, my breath slow and relaxed.

Reluctantly, I floated out of the cave exit, the sea floor falling off below. The guide motioned to me. How’s your air? she wanted to know. Do we need to turn back? I showed her my gauge absently, eyeing an anemone city in the distance. Keep going, I signaled. I’ve got plenty of air.

VISITOR INFORMATION

The Coral Beach Diving Hotel (Port Ghalib, Marsa Alam, Egypt; 20-65-3700222; www.millenniumhotels.com) is good for divers and nondivers alike. It is close to the local airport but currently surrounded by construction. Room rates, cited in dollars, are $45 to $90, depending on the season. Emperor Divers (20-12-7372126; www.emperordivers.com) operates from the hotel and charges 60 euros, or $82 at $1.36 to the euro, for a day’s diving not including equipment (25 euros); prices are lower for multiday packages and for booking ahead.

Ecolodge Shagra Village (Marsa Alam; 20-65-3380021; 02 33 79942 www.redsea-divingsafari.com) offers chalets, huts and tents on the beach, for 35 to 50 euros a person per night. A reef at the hotel’s doorstep makes it attractive to dedicated divers, but there is little to do here for nondivers. Five days of unlimited shore diving cost 185 euros; equipment and boat dives are extra.

These dive sites are accessible for an extra fee:

Abu Dabab: a coastal reef with green turtles and resident dugong.

Shaab Samadai: home to a small network of caves and a number of spinner dolphins.

Elphinstone Reef: a reef wall hundreds of feet tall and a good bet for seeing sharks.