Oman Trip

First, a little background.  I'm on a temporary visa, valid for  30-day stay here in Dubai.  One of the benefits to this is that it's free (well, included in the airfare I guess) and best of all it requires a road trip somewhere outside the Emirates to get my passport restamped.  So on Friday April 8th, my buddy Steve and I took a trip to Musundam, Oman. Musundam is a very remote place in the mountains at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, where the water is clear and the views are simply breathtaking.  The travel company picked us up at 6:30 a.m. in a small van here at the dorms, and we headed out with the sun rising to our right.  On the way, we transferred to a large coach bus and picked up a few other groups of tourists, mostly retired vacationing Germans and Englishmen.  We ended up with a group of about 40 people, and we headed up into the tall rocky mountains of Oman. 

Dhow boat

Mountains of Musundam

Once we got there, we loaded up into a traditional Arabic boat called a Dhow. It's got a big motor under the deck that sounds like a tractor, and cushions all around to sit on.  We cruised out into the clear water of the mountainous gulf, snacking on dates and hot tea.  A tour guide told us a little bit about the fishing villages that lie at the base of the cliffs.  Alternating between the German and English languages, he explained that these villages consist of about 100 people who are fisherman preserving the old way of life.  For them, boats are a way of life...kids take the boat into school, women take the boat to town to shop, and men spend their nights fishing off the boats.  I was amazed at how people can live at the base of these cliffs, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.  They sure do wake up to a beautiful view every morning.

Arabian angel fish

Snorkeling

We took a couple stops to go snorkeling.  The first place was an island that used to be a British settlement.  Steve and I swam to the island and climbed the massive rock steps leading up the cliff, just like Rocky Balboa in training.  In the water, there were fish swimming all around us, and we got some nice photos…the fish in the picture above is an Arabian anglefish, probably because of his golden “wing”.

One of the coolest parts of the cruise was dolphin racing.  Someone spotted dolphins surfacing off in the distance, and so the captain drove over to see if they would follow our boat.  Sure enough, they did.  It turns out that dolphins love to race boats.  The races went on for about a half hour, and the dolphins swam with us four-wide as we chugged along full throttle.  Eventually, Flipper and his friends tired out, and we continued on with the cruise.

The day went by quickly, and eventually it was time to head towards the sunset back to dock.  We were wiped out, it had been a good day of cruising, swimming, climbing, and picture-taking.  I took this picture of the sunset at the Oman border crossing - a good ending to a great day.

Sunset at the Oman Border