| Welcome to Oman. We were looked after by Mandy
and Dave. Isn't it great getting off the plane somewhere and you don't
even know what the currency is, let alone how to get them, or how many
your get for a good ripe west country potato.
As you can see, Mandy's not camera shy, Dave is, and skirley's not quite certain about cameras, but is certain that there's a frisby somewhere that needs chewing. |
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| View from their house. As you can see, this place is like a holiday camp. Poor Dave does have to go to work for about 4 hours a day though, so it can't be all play. |  |
| Xmas day was a bit weird ! Davey had bought Mandy this strange smoke machine, and most of the day was spent trying to figure out exactly how much water it should be placed in to get the most smoke. Here we see when the technical support guy was called in. Still, by the end of the day none of us really cared. |  |
| Never fear, the caped crusader was there to rescue us all. (She had parked here llama outside for the week) |  |
| Outside Dave and Mandy's house on a lovely Xmas day, typical weather in Oman, (or even a bit cold!). But we were pleased to get out of the Delhi fog and get some real sunshine, as you can tell from the fact that Mary was wearing a short shirt. The petit car in the background was kindly provided by some friends of M&D's, so we could take two vehicles off on our trips. This was needed mainly because Dave needed a complete car to hold all the wood for the campfire. Luckily Sequioa trees don't grow in Oman, or else he'd have had one of them on the fire. Note how clean the car is at this stage. |  |
| Just 1 hours drive from Muscat in Nokhal fort
, quite a few years old, probably about 1400 ish, and set out really
nice. Weapons from all through the eras and all the rooms laid out as
the people would live there.
No blood left though. |
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| A bit of national pride for the grand sultana himself. The Oman flag with the distinctive crossed knives obscured by the wind. Look it up for yourself. |  |
| After Xmas we headed off to Tiwi beach, Dave making vital use of the GPS. Mind you, I'm sure he would use it to go to the chip shop seeing as it is his toy of the month! |  |
| The rock is quite old and weathered, very good for climbing, unlike Egypt. Most of the habitation is in the narrow wet-ish strip north of the mountains, see below. |  |
| Tiwi is south of muscat, Jebel sham is inland and to the west, zoom on the map to see them both. Or get an atlas. |  |
| Of course, if Daves GPS didn't work, we always
had the master navigator keeping a keen nose on everything.
Tiwi was a late night finding a campsite, and the next day was a walk into a beautiful lush river valley with a stream and natural underground lake at the top. Unfortunately it was too wet for the camcorder, as demonstrated by skirley's nose. |
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| On the way back we had a quick lunch break, very handy chaps them Omanis, placing shelters all over the place. |  |
| When we got back to muscat, Mandy took us out
dolphin watching, past a (debatable) Arab dhow. looks a bit modern to
me. Apparently they went conquering all the way down the East African
coast in these.
Of course, dolphin watching requires...... |
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.......
watching.
- bandits at 6 o clock !
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| Luckily, at the end of the trip the dolphs came out to play, but not before Mandy had bitten her nails down to the bone in worry. She promised us dolphins, we got them, and we only missed whales by 2 days. |  |
| After the eco tour we piled back into desert
convoy formation, and legged it up jebbel shams for new years eve.
This was half way up when Dave had got out to warn the girls that the air up here was too thin to support the quantity of yapping they had been maintaining all the way from Muscat, and that for their own safety they should try to limit it to 300 words a minute. |
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| That's what Dave threatened them with if they didn't shut up, a birds-eye view of the eagles nest on the way down. According to the toy boy's 'wonder toy' we were at 2500m altitude, and it got very cold at night. |  |
| But it was very pretty. |  |
| wispy things |  |
| And the new years resolution ? | Never spend new years eve somewhere so quiet and calm you have to keep kicking the girls to keep them awake until midnight. |