The Ade Tour – Day 9

Today we hopped back into the car to visit some of the beaches near to Muscat. In particular we were heading towards Yiti and As Sifah. The route we needed to take took us very close to Muttrah where we were yesterday. After navigating our way through the Muscat road system we found ourselves at the start of the route. For some reason I had thought that the start of the route would be a peaceful little turn off, something akin to a turnoff to a beach in Christchurch. However as a complete contradiction the start of the route actually turned out to be this crazy little town, with tiny winding streets, that were full of people, animals and children.

After this little part of town the route to the beach then rose steeply, and I mean steeply, up the hill and meandered its way into the mountains. About half way up the mountain range, towards the beach, you can take a left hand turn and drive up the cell phone maintenance road to look back at the view of Ruwi. So we did. The road to the cell phone towers was pretty crazy, and as you can see from the photos someone coming back down the hill obviously didn’t make it, crashing into the ditch. The view from the top was pretty lovely. Although I was very surprised by the big black clouds that were above our heads. In NZ that would mean a thunder storm, however here nothing happened, and the clouds just dissipated as the day went on.

We continued back along the road to the beach and got a rather big surprise when the road sort of ended and degenerated into a rather large series of construction and road works. After a little while the penny dropped and I realised that this valley must have been hit hard by Cyclone Gonu that went through a few months ago, and that this must be all the reconstruction work. As we got closer to the beach we started to see some of the little villages, and how damaged they were by the cyclone. The road was a real mess with large potholes and sections that had been washed away. A new large bridge was being constructed at one point. Many of the houses in the village had been damaged with some of them basically fully collapsed.

The beach itself wasn’t all that much better as it had a bit of a putrid smell (decaying organic matter that washed up from the storm probably) and was a bit of a wreck with debris all over the place. After seeing Yiti beach we decided that As Sarib probably wouldn’t be in any better shape and that maybe we should reevaluate our plans for the afternoon. We therefore decided to retrace our steps of yesterday and to go back to Muttrah. A couple of reasons for this.

1) Mum wanted to go to the same place for lunch as she really enjoyed the food ( and it is very important that we look after her stomach or else she gets cranky)
2) The elder Ade’s felt guilty about deleting some of the photos that I had taken on their camera yesterday and wanted to go back so I could take them again.

So off we pootled back into the shopping district. And yes, we went shopping again. After another lovely lunch (this time we were seated at a table with a lovely couple from Holland) we hit the souk again. The intention this time was not to shop, but to instead just retake some of the photos that were deleted. Unfortunately for Pa Ade it degenerated slightly into a second shopping trip and Ma Ade and I ended up walking out of the souk the proud owners of some bed coverings (which would make eeyore cringe with all the textures and the colors)


After the second shopping expedition we headed back around the coast again to the old town of Muscat as I wanted to stop and take a look at the Sultan’s Palace that we missed yesterday as we drove past. Ma and Pa Ade were obviously feeling a little bit tired at this point as they didn’t get out of the car with me, and I can categorically say that they missed the prettiest site in all of Muscat (that I have seen thus far). The palace was just lovely. It has the most amazing gardens and just in front of the palace it was petunias as far as the eye could see. I took a lot of photos there.

From there we continued around the coast road to a little stop called Kalhub. We got out here for another walk, mum and dad actually coming along this time. This was a lovely little park area and we were quite surprised to see a lot of locals having picnics here. It was quite funny actually to see the one man, with his three to four wives, and all their children piling out of these cars. I truly don’t know how they all fit into the cars.

Well, that is the tour of Muscat over and done with. Tomorrow we head off towards Sur, via about three wadis! Mum can’t wait.

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