Day Two
Dust and Water
Today its the start of an off-road expedition south of Muscat. Our 4x4 - a Toyota LandCruiser - appears at the house and we jump in. Our driver is Tahani, who was born in Germany but now has converted to Islam and lives in Oman. She was very chatty and told us lots about the country. The company was Mark Tours and we thoroughly recommend them!
Here's some pictures of the vehicle in action and some of the mountain scenery on the way.
Goats get everywhere in Oman. In the desert, on the roads, in the towns, and most lazily, in the doorways. Imagine waking up in the morning, opening your front door, and having to shoo the goats away! Taeko fell in love with several goats, and decided she wanted to buy one. Tahani told her the price of a goat in Oman and it was quite affordable. I don't know how we didn't end up with one in the back of the car. Here's some goats:
Tahani seems to know all the local children on our route, and often brings them sweets and gifts, in return they give us their smiles and their fascination with seeing their pictures on my camera screen!
As we cross some hills and head to the sea we pass a stone construction used as a lookout point, and also as somewhere to hide! Donkeys and trees populate the scrubby desert.
As the road wound down to the coast we passed through several little fishing villages. A new coast road is being built along here which will change the character of the coast considerably. In this village we forded the waters carefully on a rough track, but this photograph shows where the new highway construction already cuts a scar across the inlet.
The coast here is undeveloped, full of rocky bays and quiet inlets, spectacular rock scenery and pure white sands.
I can't visit a rocky beach without doing a bit of rock balancing. I'm quite keen on the "bridge" sculpture.
Of course my sculpture is not a patch on Nature's:
We headed on to Wadi Shab. This is an oasis in the mountains where water collects in the pools so that palm trees and vegetation flourish.
To get to the cave we were heading for required some more swimming. I did say I'm a feeble swimmer didn't I? I think this was the first time I've ever swum in freshwater. I only had a couple of panic attacks. Getting into the water was a relief from the heat though. Getting out onto hot rocks with bare feet was painful.
At the end of our trek into the wadi was the cave. Getting in meant swimming through a dark triangular tunnel, just big enough to get my head through. After initial hesitation I made it to the cave! Light came in from the other side, where a small waterslide fed the pool. A rope had been fixed to the ceiling, and I clung to that in relief. Some local boys were sitting on a ledge, but they swam off and we hauled ourselves up onto it for a rest. Getting back into the water was another tricky thing for me - did I mention that I'm a feeble swimmer? - but I eventually made it and swam out of the tunnel again.
On the way back downstream Tahani stopped us in our tracks. She'd seen a snake! Taeko was a bit scared, but I wanted to see it. We stepped back, and waited, then advanced slowly, but the snake had gone. Taeko picked up some stones with which to scare any future snakes off. We didn't see any.
Taeko and I had a late lunch while Tahani went off to say double prayers after missing one set of prayers earlier. We sat by the upper reaches of the wadi and tucked into a fine take-away we'd picked up earlier.
After food we drive off to the Turtle Beach resort, a collection of bamboo huts and a restaurant shaped like one of these dhows we saw in the ocean earlier:
After dropping our stuff off in our hut, we jump back in the car to head for the beach itself. The beach is a managed wildlife reserve where they are helping conserve the turtles as well as showing people these amazing creatures. At the entrance we see a bucket containing three small baby turtles, paddling away at the edge of the bucket! These are some lucky ones, rescued by the reserve workers to be released into the ocean later. We park further up, and there's about 100 people wanting to see the turtles. About 80 of them are taken off by arabic-speaking guides, leaving about 20 of us with an english-speaking guide. He tells us all about the turtles and their habits, and then we're off to the beach.
After a few seconds in the moonlight the guide calls us over. A green turtle is laying eggs. Once the turtles start digging their hole they cant be stopped, so you can walk up to them, shine a torch at them, even touch them, and they carry on. Disturb them as they crawl up the beach and they might just turn round and go. We watch this old lady laying her eggs for a bit and then out of the corner of my eye I see a spray of sand. Another turtle is busy digging. We all walk over and watch her. She's digging a fake hole, a decoy for the many predators on the beach. Then we watch her crawl back towards the water, across the sand in the moonlight, and back to the ocean.
We head back to the resort and fall asleep despite the wind flapping the bamboo blinds. Our alarms are set for 5am to see the turtle beach in the early sunlight.