Oman

 

Oman                                                   

We had 2 stops in the Sultanate of Oman: Muscat and Salalah with a sea day in between.  While the capital city Muscat doesn’t have the wealth and size of Abu Dhabi or Dubai, it is a modern city with stores like IKEA.  Our visit was limited to the seaside community.  Oman is not a common country to visit, but I had once seen a travel article that spoke highly of it.  It is on the Arabian Peninsula bordering the Arabian Sea.  It buts up against UAE and Yemen – we're skipping ports in Yemen.  Oman has nice coasts, mountains and deserts plus the southern part gets monsoons, so it gets green during the rainy season.

Muscat

We chose to do a dolphin and snorkeling trip in Muscat.  It was a 15 to 20 minute drive from the port to the marina where the boat was.  Along the way we saw a well maintained city and since it is the capital we saw their parliament building and a palace plus shops and a resort with a gold dome.  

Old Muscat, once occupied by the Portuguese 

Parliament

I have noticed that the Arabian Sea is full of marine wildlife.  We saw lots of dolphins on our dolphin watch adventure plus a couple sets of sea turtles mating, a flying fish, and an eagle successfully fishing.  

Upper left Sea Turtles Mating
Upper right Dauphin

Click below for a brief Dolphin video

Click [ ] bottom right to enlarge

Our snorkeling spot was up a deep narrow cove with high walls.  We were able to snorkel for an hour where we saw some coral and lots of fish.  While a fair amount of the coral was deadlooking, I did see some purple and neon green coral too.  Others on the boat were saying they saw a parrot fish, a clown fish, a puffer.  I know I saw a clown fish and then I saw just pretty colorful fish – rose one, bright blues, vibrant yellows.  On our way back to the Marina our boat driver took us through some sandstone arches and into little lagoons and pointed out a couple of very nice looking beach resorts.  The area is quite inviting and definitely a good spot for people who like the water.  We are here in the summer and it is quite hot, our guide said most people come and visit in the winter when it is cooler but still warm enough for the beach.

Two different natural arch’s large enough for us to drive a boat through

Upper left, looks like a cat on a rock
Upper Right Resort

Back at the Ship we watched the sun set over the mountains.   Our ship was sharing the port with not one, but two large Yachts owned by the Sultan.  Across the bay is an old Castle/Fort. Looking in another direction you see the Riyam monument which looks like a giant incense burner.  It’s even more spectacular at night as it lights up and changes colors.    It was built to commemorate the 20th National Day of Oman.

Sultans two yachts 

Fort on left

Riyam Monument

Salalah

I had never heard of this city before the cruise.  Which is not surprising since its populations is around 250,000.  It has a very different feel to it than Muscat because this part of Oman historically had close ties to Africa.  The people tend to have darker skin, there are fruits and vegetables that are more common in Africa.  Additionally, this is the part of Oman that gets the monsoons so there are lush banana, papaya, coconut and other plantations around the area.  Here we decided to do an excursion geared to history.  We were skeptical that there would be much to see in this port, like Sabang Indonesia we were happily wrong.  It was a Friday so we could only drive by the outside of any mosques, but we did get to tour a UNESCO Heritage site, a fruit market and sneak into a shop.  Salalalah is known worldwide for frankincense.  It is from trees that are up in the mountains near here.  Starts as a sap like maple syrup but hardens into little rocks.  This was a trading port for centuries and frankincense has always been one of the reasons why it was popular – Portuguese were here for years and various sultans.

Lush landscape along the highway

Those are farms on either side of the road

Large Hypermarket on top contrasts
Road side stands on bottom

On our tour we made several quick stops: the outside of Taqa castle which is in town, a recreation of what a farmers home used to be like and a seasonal water fall.  We spent a little more time at Bin Ali’s tomb. The castle and hut were interesting to see, but that is all I can say.   The waterfall was dry, but the stain gave a good indication of what its like in the Monsoon season.  

Taqa Castle

Recreation of traditional housing

Bigger than it looked from the outside

White-stain on the right is where the water would have been

Now Sumhuram is the UNESCO site.  It reminded Jeff and I of the ruins we saw last year in Greece and Turkey.  It was from the 3^rd century BC.  We saw tools that the archeologists had found, room types had been identified for example one area was marked as shops.  All of this was up a hill and down it further you could see some small buildings from stacked rock.  Then there was a nice harbor that probably had been enclosed at one time but now was brackish with some sea water getting in.  There were also camels down at the beach of the former harbor just wading through the water.  Camels here were almost as common as sheep were in Scotland last year.  The guides said they had found all sorts of relics that showed these people had traded with people from various places as far away as Indonesia and Southern Africa.

You can imagine guards at the entrance to the harbor
This building had a great view

Then it was on to Bin Ali’s tomb.  It is a small building that is a religious site.  The tomb is ensconced in green velvet fabric – the color green was important, but I unfortunately forget why.  Our guide explained that Bin Ali was a descendent of Muhammed and that he had done good things for the people of this area.  He emphasized that he was not a prophet because there is only 1 prophet in Islam.

From there we stopped a fruit stand to have coconut water and to oogle the market.  Jeff and I are jealous they had a much wider selection of fruits and vegetables then we have in Alabama.  We had to ask what some things were – looked kind of like a huge gourd, but most things we recognized.  Our last stop was at  a shop that opened for us to check out frankincense and a little bit of souvenirs.  After that it was time to go back to the ship.  It was 2 in the afternoon, but that is the beginning of lunch for them so we just stayed on the ship for the rest of the day. 

Frankincense