Day One

Flight – Qatar airways 7:40am to Muscat arrived 9:50am

The view out of the window as we began our decent into Muscat was breathtaking. In the lightening morning the clay brown mountains emerged from the morning cloud and appeared taking up the entire view below. At one stage the plan turned and my window came face to face with the seemingly endless beautiful view.

The airport was very fast and easy to get out of. Once again it was a great thing to be a Kiwi, as with Turkey I didn’t have to pay for a visa like the Australian and American traveling with me. This does however have one downside as I don’t get a cool sticker just a measly old stamp in my passport!

Just when we thought we had suffered enough having to endure Ramadan for the past month meaning we could finally eat in public during daylight hours. Eid, the celebration at the end of Ramadan, had begun in Doha that morning but in Oman, as we painfully discovered, they had managed to get it wrong and therefore they still had one more day of Ramadan. This means no eating and drinking in Public and that most of the shops are closed during the day.

We exited the airport and went in search of the allusive mini busses that Steph was determined to find to add a little culture to our trip, and they are dirt cheap. We were harassed by at least a dozen taxis on the way out of the airport gates and after waking along the highway footpath to what we though was a bus stop (actually advertising) we gave in and climbed into a taxi, not before asking the price and checking this against the Lonely Planet recommendation. None of the taxis in Oman are metered so you have to do your bargaining before setting out on your journey.

I had been out for Ifta the night before at the Ritz Carlton, a lovely evening with spectacular food and surroundings. However 4 hours sleep was catching up on me and I regretfully nodded my head on numerous occasions, missing the drive to the lovely cornice Hotel where we would be spending that night.

We walked through the door of the dodgy hotel, checked in and went up to the room. There were only 2 beds so they brought up a mattress and put it on the floor for our third person, what service. I was falling asleep all over the place and opted to have a quick nap while Steph and P.K. went across the street to check out the fish market. They arrived back with bananas for lunch and we started to plan our afternoon.

We set out along the cornice in search of the walled city of Muscat from our hotel in Mutrah. It was about 2km walk along the shoreline and it was a reasonably warm day. We spent a while sitting in the shade of a tree cooling down and trying to avoid these large hornet things which were patrolling the area, and our thirst temptations as it was Ramadan.

There was a museum inside the gate of the city which spanned the width of the road but the area was disserted save for a guard whom I tried to get to strangle PK or point his gun at him for a photo. He was not going to comply!

We continued from the gate through some old traditional houses into the centre of Muscat. There was almost no-one around and the city had an empty feel about it. Almost everything was closed, but we managed to find a shop to buy some water. When we tried to drink it in his shop however he became very concerned that police would show up and he would get in trouble because of Ramadan, I though it would be ok inside the shop when he had just sold it to us, what did he expect us to do with it?

We walked along to the Sultans Palace and took a while to find it as we had expected it to look rather more spectacular. Down on the water a group of young boys were trying their luck at tropical fishing with reasonable success, showing us how they kill the fish by swinging it around hook in mouth on the fishing line and hitting it on the ground, gross.

From there we took a taxi to Al Bustan a famous hotel on the list of 1,000 places to see before you die. We tried to get into the private beach area but were turned away by the security guard when we couldn’t come up with a room number. Walked outside onto the large verandas and roof to take pictures of the beautiful view. Tropical and enchanting.

Took a cab to LuLu Hypermarket to get some lunch. All of us were very thirsty and almost couldn’t stand the teasing of purchasing a cold can of drink and not being able to open it until we got back to the hotel. At my attempt to open the can, the ring pull snapped, so I took to it with my key as though it was the last drink I was going to have. The three of us sat in our crappy hotel room eating butter chicken and Pringles, breaking fast at least 2 hours early!

We sat for a white flipping through the pages of the LP and letting our lunch settle, then it was out again to look around the Souqs. We found frankincense which was interesting as Oman is considered to have the best quality frankincense and was a gift given to baby Jesus.

Frankincense or olibanum is an aromatic resin used in incense as well as in perfume.
Frankincense is tapped from Boswellia trees through slashing the bark and allowing the exuded resins to harden. Tapping is done 2 to 3 times a year with the final taps producing the best resin. High quality resin can be visually discerned through its level of opacity. Omani frankincense is said to be the best in the world, although quality resin is also produced in Yemen and along the north coast of Somalia.
The name for this resin likely comes from “incense of Franks” since it was reintroduced to Europe by Frankish Crusaders. Although it is better known as “frankincense" to westerners the resin is also known as olibanum, which is derived from the Arabic al-lubán ("the milk") a reference to the milky sap tapped from the Boswellia tree. Some have also postulated that the name comes from the Arabic term for "Oil of Lebanon" since Lebanon was the place where the resin was sold and traded with Europeans. Compare with Exodus 30 : 34, where it is clearly named levonah, meaning either "white" or "Lebanese" in Hebrew.
The lost city of Ubar, sometimes identified with Irem in what is now the town of Shisr in Oman, is believed to have been a centre of the frankincense trade along the recently rediscovered 'Incense Road'. Ubar was rediscovered in the early 1990s and is now under archaeological excavation.
Frankincense is used in perfumery and aromatherapy. Olibanum essential oil is obtained by steam distillation of the dry resin. Frankincense was lavishly used in religious rites. According to the Bible's Gospel of Matthew 2:11, gold, frankincense and myrrh were among the gifts to Jesus by the magi 'from out of the east'. The growth of Christianity depressed the market for frankincense during the fourth century CE. Desertification made the caravan routes across the Rub al Khali or 'Empty Quarter' of Arabia more difficult. Additionally, increased raiding by the nomadic Parthians in the Near East caused the frankincense trade to dry up after about 300 CE.

Our next destination was Bayt Az-Zubair a museum which was closed unfortunately, due to Ramadan, earlier on in the day but had said it would be open by 9pm. We told the taxi to return in an hour. The museum was still closed in fact so we wend across the road to the art gallery which I was sure had lights on and a sign out in front a few minutes before. I knocked on the door hardly expecting to have some one open it who was hardly expecting to find me on the other side of it. The owners kindly showed us in and we very much enjoyed taking in some of the local art work and souvenirs.

We walked to the palace area where we had been earlier in the day and sat there taking photos and trying to get the best night settings on our cameras as we had a while to wait before the taxi came back. We then went across the road to a small coffee shop to get some drinks. The streets were filled with kids running and biking and playing games. They loved seeing us and would repeatedly say “hello, how are you” and run away laughing. One small boy came over to us and shook my and P.K's had but wouldn’t shake Steph's, P.K. thought that was hilarious and maybe the highlight of the trip!

It was then time to head back to our lovely residence and get a good sleep for the 2 day tour we started the next day.