Jacqui and Richard Abroad: Thursday, September 24th - had a good holiday and learned a lot!

As mentionned in our previous post, we have been off since Tuesday, Sept 22nd. It is so nice to leave school on Monday afternoon and hear people say "Have a nice weekend" - how can you go wrong; we get five days off!
It's Eid al-Adha, the second of two religious holidays celebrated by Muslims. Jacqui and I decided to visit parts of Oman instead of travelling abroad; Oman is such a beautiful country and there is so much that we haven't seen yet - might as well try to do as much as we can while we're here. So we went for a 3 day road trip, first driving to Duqm, then coming back up following the coast while spending a day at Masirah Island. It was an amazing road trip. The diversity in scenery and landscape from place to place is unbelievable - one minute you're driving in a rocky environment and the next, you're driving in sand dunes, or you're driving in mountains and the next thing you know, you're driving in a desert valley with nothing around. It was so cool to see. You also have to watch for wildlife as camels and goats are roaming the area and cross the highway at will. Speaking of highway, most of them, as you get maybe two hours away from Muscat, were not monitered by radar and there were no cops around, so even though the posted speed limit was 100 km/h, we would get passed while driving at 140! That seemed to be the standard speed, and the roads were fine for it; it wasn't dangerous.
We went to Duqm (maps below) on the first day (Tuesday); left Muscat at about noon (way later than we planned - but sleep is good!) and got there around 6pm. We stayed at Crowne Plaza Duqm (there are only two real hotels in the place); actually Duqm isn't very big - type of New Liskeard type of place, but they have a sea port and are counting on that to promote their business (Insha'Allah). The hotel was fine but I wouldn't go out of my way to get back there, Even the beach was not as nice as I expected (maybe my expectations are too high).

We left the hotel in Duqm on Wednesday morning and drove to Shannah (about 250 km), hoping to catch the ferry to Masirah Island without having to wait to long. The thing about driving is, it doesn't matter how fast you drive (I drove a lot at 140 - 145 km/h), but it's still takes the same amount of time to get there as if you're driving at an average of 100 km/h. I really don't get it (I prefer fast to slow - I like the 140!!). Fortunately, we got there and could hop onto the ferry right away (after we had to go back and buy our tickets, which was a slight delay!). We ended up on the island at about 3 pm, went out to book our hotel; after visiting three of them (ranging from 25 to 150 rials - multiply by approximately 3.4 to convert into CAD). We booked a cheap one (30 OMR) then drove around the island (about 170 km); we found some nice beaches, others not so nice, and there were even beaches we couldn't find! (we don't have a 4X4 so it cuts down on the number of roads we can access!)

On Thursday morning, the day of Eid al-Adha, we checked out of our hotel and went out to get our ferry pass (first had to get coffee for Jacqui in a male oriented society - there were NO women in restaurants or coffee shops). As we had time to kill between the time we got our tickets and our departure time, we drove around the city. As we saw many families performing the Eid al-Adha rituals, we asked one of them if we could take a picture. They obviously accepted and offered us to come in for coffee afterwards. It was so cool; one of the women in the family who spoke very good english explained to us what their ritual was about; it was so instructive. We had a short chat with them but it would have been so nice to spend the day with them (they would have had us for the whole day; we would have lived parts of the Eid experience with then). Even though we couldn't stay, as our ferry boat was leaving in less than an hour away, it was very nice to see the friendliness and the openess of the Omani people (and that is something we have been saying all along - they are some of the nicest people we've met on the planet!! It was also nice to understand a bit more of their culture and of the Muslim religion.