Diving in Oman

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Chelle had to go to Muscat for work late last week so she managed to convince her lovely boy to drive over on the weekend and come to make some bubbles with her.

I flew to Muscat on Monday night and then worked there on Tuesday and Wednesday meeting clients and doing some training. Muscat runs a slightly different weekend system than Dubai. They have their weekends on Thursday and Friday.So I had booked us a couple of days diving for the Thursday and Friday at the Oman Diving centre.

This is a diving centre that is a little way out of town, near the Shangri-La hotel. It looked quite nice from the outside but we were a little put off by the attitude of some of the staff. They were german and everything had to be run just so. You had to check out and check in all of your gear, which was a little weird. And rather annoying as well when it is nearly 50 degrees outside and they make you wait for 15 minutes to check all of your gear back in on the last day.

The dives themselves were just lovely. The first dive was at a location called Wall Street. There was an approx 20 minute boat ride to get to this dive site. The boat was a little on the old and tired side and there were quite a few people packed on board the boat as well.

After the first dive we were treated to a wee break with some apples and cheap and nasty biscuits. and then we did our second dive at a place called Black Island. This dive is quite well known as a resting place for turtles.

We stayed the weekend at Dave's friends house in Muscat. This was a lovely apartment just down by the beach, Shatti Beach. Muscat is such a lovely place, it reminded me an awful lot of home and queensland as well.

On Thursday day we went back to the Oman Diving Centre and did another couple of dives with them. First thing in the morning they took us back to the same dive site where we did the second dive yesterday. Black Island. This morning the dive was just lovely. We saw about 5 or 6 turtles and saw loads of reef fishes. It was lovely. The second dive was even better. We moved around to another dive site called Coral Garden and I think that this was probably the best dive of the trip. The last dive was just a beautiful, peaceful drift through the water.

So all in all a lovely weekend. I probably wouldn't go back to the Oman Diving Centre though I have say. While we were there we were told about a lovely dive site called Daminayat Island. So I think that when we go back to Oman in a couple of weeks time we will go and try a different dive centre.

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Photos

Chelle and Dave
Self portrait

Honeycomb Moray
Fat bastard

Black Island
The beautiful dive site

Dave
bubble bubble sploush plosh