Border Procedure - Hatta checkpoint
Sohar beach. This place is not very developed. It reminds me of towns in Algarve, Portugal before the ruthless invasion of the tourism industry.
Some sightseeing and lunch with a lot of hungry birds surrounding me.
I arrived at Muscat around midday. This city is very interesting. You can really have a feeling of the discovery ages with all this natural ports and old fortresses guarding them. I’ve learned that the 3 main fortresses were actually built by the Portuguese that occupied this area between 1507 till 1650.
The amount of government buildings around the forts are stagerring. There is a prevalence of strange architectonic choices and the scale of it makes me feel like I’m in a Georgio Di Chirico painting. I was there taking pictures on a forbiden area when I saw a sign stating that photography was forbidden. The rest of the old part of the city is also very interesting. There is a lot of mountains and corniches - roads along the sea. There is a lot of strange new features in some of the hills like using 5 centuries watch towers as cell phone antennas and huge abstract sculptures.
The old town souk is so authentic. The organic stucture of it is so authentic and it runs for kilometers, full of textures, colours, smells and ecletic people. It’s a feast to the senses.
After a while I’ve met an Omani iman at the door of a mosque. The conversation started with him asking my nationality. After acknowledge that I was Portuguese he told me that they are still very aware of our previous presence there, but today, they consider us as friends.
Royal Opera House in Muscat.
Qurm beach.
In Crimean beach there was a guy going along the sea front standing up on a bicycle and waving 2 Omani flags.
Bimmah sinkhole between Muscat and Sur. Very impressive natural feature, but it's too crowded.
Wadi Shab. It's so strange the colossal concrete bridge, slicing the Wadi in two.
Wadi Shab is very busy all along the way. There's a lot of indigenous vegetation and natural pools with crystalline water. But it's also a bit too crowded.
The roads here are vey quiet and all along the coast line. t's good for stopping a lot of times for a quick dive into the sea.
Sur is a city in the south that seems more appropriate to consider it a town given it's characteristics It really looks like those forgotten fishing villages in Algarve, in the south of Portugal.
I've met Mubarak while doing a sketch on a balcony. He offered me tea (with milk which I don't drink) and I offered him a cigarette (which he clearly doesn't smoke, give the way he was coughing). We both suffered to avoid being 'rude'. He showed me a Dhow shipyard, and I learned that it takes 8 months to build each one of these traditional boats.
I went to a coffee shop to have an expresso. While I was there I started to realize that everyplace that sells something, has a guy on the outside, to take orders, to avoid that Omanis leave the comfort of their car. When they arrive they buzz the horn and a guy goes there to take their order. If they take too much time to return, they start to really go crazy with the horn..
Nothing prepared me for how chaotic and intrusive, the experience of seeing the turtles hatching would be. Between a lot of indisciplined people roaming freely in the sand and probably turning some eggs into omelets, and also others using flash to take pictures when it is strickly forbidden, because you can provoke blindness in the turtles. When I finally see a turtle laying the eggs , I couldn't stop thinking that you are at a peep show. We all looked like a bunch of pervs getting excited with the private life of these turtles.
I finally reached the further south and got to the Indic ocean. The beaches here are another level with some real oceanic waves.
It's amazing how wild everything is this part of the country. The villages here look taken from a Wild West film set.
Said and Suleiman
Nizwa
Nizwa souk
Nizwa episodes
Misfat at Abiyyin
Nizwa fort on the inside
Bahla fort
Jabel Shams
Jabel Shams region
Al Mutawaa
