Blogs from Musandam Peninsula, Oman, Middle East - page 2

We arrived in Dubai on Saturday 9th January for a two night stay prior to boarding our ship, The Splendour of the Seas, on Monday 11th for a 7 night cruise calling at Khasab in the Musandam Peninsula, Northern Oman, then Muscat: back to Abu Dhabi and finally Dubai. Good flight from Heathrow on Friday 8th January on a Quantas A380 ("a city in the sky": or at least a decent sized village in the sky). We arrived in Dubai at 07.10 on the the Saturday morning at the impressive new Terminal 3 and took a driverless train to the main terminal where we spent a fair amount of time waiting for the immigration staff to condescend to approve our visit; then another wait for our baggage. It was an hour and a half before we ... read more

We left Dubai, heading north to Oman's Musandam Peninsula, a small inhospitable area cut off from the rest of the country by the UAE. We drove through the flat desert pain, with only the odd sand dune and town breaking up the landscape. After an hour or so, barren rocky mountains appeared on the horizon. And these mountains stayed in front of us right up to the Omani border. For some reason I really enjoy crossing borders by land. The nations flags held up high, border guards, the little bit of 'no mans land' between the two border posts... it's infinitely than arriving into a new country the usual way, through a nondescript airport. As soon as we were through, the road which previously had all the space in the world to weave through the desert ... read more

We decided to try to do more on the weekends. There are so many beautiful things to see here other then the malls. Now that the weather is cooling a bit we have decided to go on adventures during the weekends. We wanted to visit other Emirates and Oman which is the country neighboring UAE. In this blog we ventured to Buraimi, Oman which Al Ain borders. I actually live right across from the border so we have finally gone across to do more than just renew our visas. We decided to visit. We also took a trip through Oman mountains to get to Hatta UAE last weekend. Hatta was a quaint village we enjoyed visiting the fort there and the heritage village. The following weekend we ventured to Musandum, Oman going through Ras Al Khaimah ... read more

Gestern haben wir einen Kurztrip in den Oman gemacht. Ziel unseres Ausflugs war Musandam. Dies ist die Spitze der arabischen Halbinsel und man ist erstaunt wie nah man auf einmal dem Iran ist. Wir fuhren durch die arabischen Emirate (Dubai, Sharja, Adjman, Um Su´Quaim, Ras al Kaihman) und haben nach einer kleinen Suche auch die Grenze zum Oman entdeckt. Der Grenzübergang ist natürlich nicht so einfach wie der in der EU. Wobei das Schwierige nicht das Ausfüllen der Papiere oder die 2-3 unterschiedlichen "Haltestelle" je Grenzland waren, sondern wir mussten für den Grenzübergang Geld bezahlen. Das habe ich bisher noch nie erlebt. (nur wenn im Vorfeld Gebühren für ein Visa anfielen) Naja, wir waren dann schließich 35 € leichter, aber im Oman.... Wir sind dann die Küstenstraße bis Khasab entlang gefahren und waren beeindruckt von der ... read more

Well today saw the Ade family circus leave Khasab to venture back into the wilds of the UAE. We counted our blessing as we left Khasab that we had done the dhow cruise the day before as a rather stiff wind had blown up overnight and one thinks that the people on today’s dhow cruises would not have had as enjoyable time as we did the day before. Quite frankly the wind was more than a little stiff and cold. So tucked up in our nice, warm little jeep we started our journey back towards RAK. The trip down to RAK was rather uneventful with the only exciting event being the waves crashing on the beach. This was remarkably different to when we came up as the beaches were completely still then. It was exciting enough ... read more