Cooling Off, Dubai Style (Part 2)

Oftentimes the best way to escape the heat in Dubai is to just leave. Most people get out of "Dodgebai" (ok it's a stretch but I make it a habit to play with my city's name as much as possible) for at least part of the hot summer, which lasts from end of April to around the middle of October. Usually that means heading to Europe or the States to really actually get out.

Counterintuitively, you can also head south, to southern Oman. There is a slice of the Arabian peninsula which actually gets part of the southwest monsoon which gets India. This creates a rainy season which lasts about 2 months from July to September, which turns everything lush and green. Of course, 30 kilometers inland the rain peters out and it is desert like the rest of the Arabian peninsula. But for the lucky peeps living by the sea, it's the best time of year. We were there in late July, which is fairly early in the green season. By end of August and early September it's probably amazing.

For those of you who are Mormon or into Mormon things, you'll also be interested to know that Book of Mormon scholars reckon this might be the "Land of Bountiful" spoken of in 1 Nephi 17. For those of you who aren't Mormon or into Mormon things, there is a story in the beginning of the Book of Mormon about a man named Lehi and his family who leave Jerusalem, travel through the desert for 8 years, then come to a Land of Bountiful on the coast, where they build a boat and sail to a distant "promised land." It was called the Land of Bountiful because it had much fruit. We enjoyed this fruit.

Here is a sheltered inlet fom the ocean where one scholar speculated that Father Lehi's ship might have set sail from. I don't know how accurate this is and am generally skeptical of such claims to places being "The Place" where something happened. It was 2600 years ago! But it was still a cool place and a good opportunity for some spiritual reflection.

We also found some old forts which, according to our guidebook, have no particular signifance. Tim, for some reason, decided that Oman would be a good place to don his green shoes (see my post about Dubai fashion); in combination with his red beard he looked like a giant Aussie leprechaun.

In any case, what's actually more interesting is what is happening here today. You know there's something wrong when you get excited about going someplace that's damp, rainy, and 40 degrees cooler than your current location. But I was absolutely thrilled to get out of Dubai for the weekend. And I'm not the only one who relished the rain. Despite the fact that it was a misty rain the entire time I was there, everybody seemed to be out. Picknickers everywhere, on the side of the road, on the beach, up the mountains. Just out in their lawn chairs hanging out... in the rain. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the picnics.

We did, however, stumble across what turned out to be the party of the year in Oman. It was the 40th anniversary of Sultan Qaboos (the ruler of Oman) to the throne. We noticed they were blocking off the streets so we got out to check out what was going on, next thing we know there's just masses of people marching in a huge parade, waving Omani flags and pictures of the Sultan.

Men waving swords, chanting and dancing.

The women were out in droves too, mostly covered up by the niqab but still singing as cheerily as everyone else.

One cute part of the parade was a pack of younger girls dressed in red, green, and white (the colors of the flag). Behind them you can see one interesting sign was one with large pink Arabic script that said, "Thank you dear Sultan for your support for the Omani woman and her improvement."

It was fun, and we could have made it look quite scary:

Fortunately Omanis are super nice and down to earth and a lot of fun to hang out with in the rain. This turned out to be a great day, and we even got some great pictures of ourselves. See if you can play a little "Where's Curtis" in this picture...

Tim the giant leprechaun stood out from the crowd a little more.

Below was the best shot of the day I think. You have the two Pakistani men in the foreground holding hands (public displays of affection between men are quite common in this region and are not an indicator of sexual orientation). Then you have the marching Omani patriots and then in the corner, our favorite Australian leprechaun, trying to blend in.

We also made it up into the mountains, where we found some "sink holes," which are deep canyons where sometimes the water will create rivers and waterfalls. Again, we were a bit early in the year for the waterfalls, but was still pretty spectacular.

Past the sink holes we got above the clouds and rain, where we both found the end of the greenery, and some pretty cool views. Maybe cliche, but I thought these were both some cool shots of some local tourist women. Our final spot on our little trip was the Mughsayl blow hole, where the waves come in and crash into the rocky shore, which is very porous and so you have these random holes where the water will come crashing in and shoot up, geyser like, with each crashing wave.

The biggest one shoots up to 100 feet in the air. I got a video of some of the smaller ones to give a better sense of how it works. The best geysers are at the end of the video...