Blogs from Oman, Middle East - page 9

castellano debajo del frances.... Une petite mise a jour de dernière minute avant que vous ne lisiez la suite ! Nous sommes le 15 novembre... VOYAGE EXCELLENT mais tellement intense que pas beaucoup d'heures devant moi pour allumer l'ordinateur ! Venons de passer une soirée extraordinaire, dans un hotel extraordinaire pour feter les 75 ans de JJ.... difficultés d'envoyer ce blog car mise a jour idiote de Windows 10 qui m'a bloqué l'ordinateur pendant toute la soirée.... Vous laisse lire ce qui suit et deja MERCI a tous ceux qui ont envoyé un petite message par n'importe quel biais pour souhaiter tout ce qui a de mieux aujourd'hui a JJ... .... Nous voici bien arrivés... et pourtant pour nous deux il s'en est fallut de peu !!! Luxembourg passe comme une lettre à la poste jusqu'au ... read more

Prior to visiting Oman, I had no perception of how mountainous parts of the country are, and while it may not stack up to the same heights for the statisticians, to my mind the Al Hajar mountain range, through which we travelled during our last couple of days in Oman, was just as impressive as many sights I had taken in previously in the Andes and Himalayas. Our first stop as we drove up into the range was at Jebel Akhdar (meaning 'green mountains'), a broad area around the Sayq Plateau, which is mainly famous for its gardens, farms and terrace plantations. Particularly impressive were the latter, which stretched right down the side of the mountains and must have provided quite some physical challenge to the farmers seeking to grow crops at the various levels. This ... read more

Geo: 26.171, 56.2406After a poor nights sleep I am awoken by a clarion call of different alarms at 06.15. So paranoid that we would oversleep and miss our excursion we set alarms on both our phones and the in-room telephone. They all went off simultaneously. Today we are in Khasab. Khasab is a city in an enclave of Oman bordering the United Arab Emirates called Musandam.The Musandam Peninsula has an abundance of sheltered fjords, created by fragmented rock they stretch claw-like into the sea and massive overshadowing cliffs tower above. The coast juts into the Strait of Hormuz and extends some 600 kilometres. These spectacular fjords have given the area a second name "The Norway of Arabia".We shower and grab a quick breakfast before heading down to the aft bar to collect our tour stickers (No ... read more

After skirting the eastern coastline of Oman, it was time to head inwards. First up was a drive to Wadi Bani Khalid, an oasis spot in the middle of some dry and barren mountains, and one of the larger wadis in the country, which contains a significant water level all year round. This results in lush plantations on the drive in. The pools contained clear deep blue water and a number of us took the opportunity to take a refreshing dip before taking in a buffet lunch. We got quite a funny sensation during the swim when we stopped on a rock ledge and got bombarded with little fish swimming straight into our feet instead of avoiding humans as they usually do. After lunch, we headed for Wahiba Sands, a vast undulating white sea of sand ... read more

Geo: 23.6065, 58.5881We awake a little earlier today. Just before 8am local and we have just docked in the Port Sultan Qaboos. This is located in the old district of Muscat called Mutrah. I step onto the balcony and the air temperature is already very warm. It's going to be hot today. We don't have any excursion booked and plan to just go ashore and stroll around to see what we can see. We breakfast and then head back to cabin to apply plenty of sun screen. Cameras in hand we head ashore. Shuttle buses ferry us to the port entrance where we are immediately set up by a large group of taxis drivers. They are very persistent, polite but firm 'no thank you' seems to have little effect and one follows us for some distance ... read more