On the road again

Since the couch was so comfortable I didn't get up until 10 am. I got ready and just about the same time Aziz came back home. We had a cup of coffee and a toast before he dropped me to the airport on the way to his next appointment. Picking up the car was straight forward. It was a big ole Nissan Pathfinder in white. My large backpack just about filled 20% of the area of the boot, my other backpack had the second row for itself.

After getting used to the AWD buttons and the Automatic transmission I was ready to set off. My first destination was the Supermarket to pick up a tent and some camping gear. Off to CarreFour it was and all together it was about 30 OMR. Back in the car I noticed the radio was not working... It'll be a quite 6 days on the road so. From the "Oman Off Road Book" I chose to first travel down the east Coast of Oman towards Sur. Let's see how far I was going to get today.

Out of the City was not too complicated, just getting used to the interesting way the Omanis attach their Exits to their Motorways took a bit of time. There is an exit on the left of the road the next one is on the right then the road splits suddenly, and most of the signs are pointing into completely wrong directions. But I did make it out of the City and was on a well built two lane motorway through the mountains southbound. The landscape as really impressive. Very dry of course but lovely to look at.
Coming closer to the coast near Qurayat I decided to do a little detour to one spot from the book. It was a little Oasis village called Hayl al Ghaf. The people sitting under the trees waiting for the day to pass were all very interested in this foreign car coming to their town, some waved and I waved back.

Soon I initiated the waving to not be unfriendly and everyone waved back. I parked the car in the shade near a dry river bed and walked a little around the village to take some pictures. The goats and a local school boy with no English were very friendly but then it was time to leave in order to find a nice spot where I could put up my tend before it got dark.

After a couple kilometres I reached the coast and left the new built Highway in order to travel on the old Muscat-Sur road that is closer to the coast. I saw my first camel and decided to take a picture just to make sure I will not get another chance. Just a few kilometres before a small fishing village called Fins I saw a couple of cars parked on a rock dune and drove over to join them. I just sat there on the rocks and looked at the sea and an older man with a big white beard fishing with just a net in the surf.
After everyone but the fisherman left, a boat came back to shore and dropped of their catch. By now it was time to set up my tent and a few minutes later the old fisherman came over and asked me the usual things, "where are you from?", "how old are you?", "are you married?" and "first time in Oman?".

The great thing was that he also offered me some of his catch which we had later. When I asked what kind of fish this is he caught, he told me "good fish". We fried it, wrapped in aluminium foil on a gas cooker and it even came with a can of his beer and a couple of glasses of whiskey which he acquired through a friend who has an alcohol license, since not everyone is allowed to buy Alcohol in Oman. You have to get this license from your employer, who then is informed every time of what and how much you bought. Wouldn't like that to be the case in Ireland :-).

The whiskey certainly helped a bit falling asleep on the thin mattress on the rocky beach.
What a great start into an adventurous trip through this beautiful country full of nice people.