Jacqui and Richard Abroad: Tuesday, Oct 7th

Monday was a quiet day. We spent some time watching TV and met our friends for dinner. Everyone seemed to be tired, after our outing of Sunday (there are probably other words we could use for “tired”, but that’s the best one that comes to mind to stay politically correct in a Muslim country!) On Tuesday morning, we packed our bags and went to the airport to fly with our friends to Salalah, a city located about 1000km from Muscat in the southwest part of Oman. Everyone you talk t, that has been there, says it is very beautiful, and that it’s “green everywhere”, which for the Middle East is quite something. The flight there was interesting as we got to see the land from up above, seeing all the wadis, the river beds that are now dried up. At one point in time, there was water and they had rivers just like at home. Some still get water during the monsoon season, from what we are told. Once in Salalah, we checked in our hotel, took a little dip in the pool then took off for our first of three expeditions. Our friends had hired a driver to drive us around the area. He took us up a mountain where we were able to see the supposedly tomb of Job (Turkey and Lebanon also claim to have that tomb, so …). The drive there was very interesting as it is all in the mountains, and yes, it is green everywhere! We stopped by a small hillside restaurant which offered a beautiful view of the valley below. When we got back to town, we visited the silver and gold souks – basically one street with silver and gold shops on each side. We browsed a bit but didn’t stay very long. Everyone was tired so we just headed back to our hotel at about 8:30 `pm and called it a day.