Jacqui and Richard Abroad: Saturday, February 7th - Our visit to the Muscat Festival

Friday started as a usual Friday: walk on the beach, lunch and part of the afternoon by the pool at the Crowne Plaza. In the evening, we went to a park located in Amirat, a "suburb" of Muscat. Every year, Muscat holds its heritage and cultural festival. The events were held in two parks at opposite ends of the city, so we decided to check out the one that is closest to us. The publicity made for the festival was mentioning an Ice Village, with a slide and penguins, so we had to check that out! The "village" was basically a tunnel that you walked in until you got to a circular area of maybe 20 - 25 feet in diameter before exiting through another tunnel. But every thing they mentionned was there. They had a snow making machine - it didn't really look like snow - there was ice on the ground by the side of the path we walked on, there was a slide - a small metallic slide that we often find with swing sets bought at CT, and penguins, which were obviously not real (made of plastic, plaster and something else, I guess). But the young Omani kids seem to enjoy it quite a bit; it was cool to see.
They also had a Traditional Cultural Village, which was more interesting. They had crafts, art, music and dance, as well as traditional food. It was pretty interesting. There was also a sport demonstration. We're still not sure what the sport was; we've never seen anything like it. It was played on a sand court, like beach volleyball, but the court is probably one third of beach VB. They had two teams of 4 guys, all standing at the end of their respective sides. Then one person from one team would go to the edge of the court on the other team's side, and then the four guys would tackle him down as he tried to do... we're not sure what. It was weird. Then they start again. I'll have to find out more about this thing.