Sur & More

As I was in Mascat, I wanted to go a little bit more to the countryside and see more places. More traditional ones. More places away from the anyway not so touristic Mascat.

So, some of my friends suggested Sur or Salalah. Sur is around 2 hours away from Mascat.

Salalah is around 1000km afar. Known as one of THE touristic destinations within the gulf regions as it is usually cooler and there are a lot of green areas.

I decided to avoid the touristic peak and go to Sur. I decided on that for 2 reasons: Ras al Jinz and Sur itself. You will soon know why Ras al Jinz.

So, 3 friends and me, we went by car there and decided to do a little road trip. An Egyptian who never travelled before to any other country and now got to Oman. A half-Omani/half-Moroccan and a half-Moroccan/half-Zanzi. No doubts this would be fun!

On the way to Sur, my friends eagerly showed me the “mountains”. It was very sweet. Indeed. Especially for someone who comes from a country which is covered 70% by mountains. 😉

At an estimated 45°C outside temperature I appreciated the air condition. Though I still felt like it was 30°C.

(Do you see the crab?)

As Sur is a city next to the sea, the fishing industry found its place there. Though most of the boats/ships look like they have been there for decades and will break down soon, they are still using them:

Especially the various mosques caught my eyes. It’s not that I’m the most religious person on this earth but they had something special.

Note: at this time we still didn’t know where we would spend the night but thought about the beach.

A few more pics about Sur:

Note: the beach you see in the background…I was not allowed to go there because I’m a woman. 😉 It was ok, there were anyway way more beautiful ones 🙂

As Iftar (Breaking the fast) was coming closer, we were about to get the food (also already considering dinner & “breakfast”…

and we made our way to a place near the coast which gave us a view towards the city.

And so also the sunset passed. We decided to put our plan of sleeping at the beach into practice.

So we went on to Ras al Jinz and checked out the place where we wanted to see the turtles. A building that looks from the outside like a jail. And they told us to be there in the morning at around 4am. As it was very windy, we decided to go a little bit further to Ras al Hadd and check the beach out there.

After a short walk there, where we saw a dead turtle (no, that’s not the turtle watch I was talking about before), all variations of crabs and a couple of cats, we decided to stay there and have our dinner.

We split up in sleeping at the back and in the car. It was a bit windy but hey, the car gave protection.

As we fell asleep we already had to get up again. 2.30am. Not a good idea. But as soon as we got back to the turtle beach, we knew why. And had a few reasons. Something I have never seen before in life.

We could see turtles laying their eggs and little ones hatching and trying to make their way to the sea…

The trails below are all from turtles…

It paid off. We were all tired like we haven’t been sleeping for days but we didn’t regret it.

Our next destination on this mini-roadtrip should be Wadi Shab.

On our way there, we got so tired that we just decided to stop on the side of the road. Not even saying a word, we fell asleep immediately and slept for around 1h until we continued our journey. (Yes, Oman is a very safe country)

Wadi Shab is a kind of oasis where I have seen amazing pictures from. We got the advice to take a lot of water with us. As we thought we might also swim, we decided not to take any camera with us. Well, we swam a lot. Yet, on the way back we found a way which works without swimming and staying dry. But at around 40°C even in the shadow you welcome getting wet!

The picture above was the only one which I shot at the “entrance”. It doesn’t show a percentage of the beauty of the landscape in the WADI. Palmtrees, little lakes, waterfalls, amazing rock formations – a scenery and, in general, a trip that I will never forget!