Last day in Oman

Oman is a country of natural beauty – on the ground and under the water. 

Today, being our last day in Oman we went on a morning boat trip for dolphin watching and snorkelling.  It is off-season now, too hot the locals say for tourists.  The busy season is October to March, just like India and just like India this is great for us because there are no crowds travelling at this time. 

There were five of us on the boat.  A guy from Denmark, who says he may have lived in the middle east in a past life because he can identify with the area so much and two (male) flight attendants from KLM on a stop over – now they were entertaining.  They loved the fact that their fins (flippers) matched their swimmers and they commented that my fins also matched the trim on my swimmers, bright blue.

There were dozens of dolphins.  We watched them play for half hour then motored on to the snorkelling spot, past Qantab beach where we spent time the other day on the beautiful beach of Oman Dive Centre.  The snorkeling was fun, shame about the amount of dead coral but we saw three turtles and many interesting fish. 

This afternoon I visited the ‘beauty parlour’ near the hotel for a leg wax and ended up having a wax, manicure and haircut.  I haven’t had a haircut since the day before we left Australia, it was long and badly needed a trim. 

Two Filipino ladies ran the salon.  Oman is the same as Dubai in that aspect that the country is run by an Asian imported labour force. While one lady did my nails the other did my hair.  She washed, cut, blow waved and straightened my hair – all for $13.80.  What a bargain and what a great job she did, I must say.  

Jim thinks otherwise – when I walked back into the hotel room he says “Oh my God”.  I replied ‘don’t worry after the next wash it will be back to its natural messy state’.

Tomorrow morning we are catching the 6am bus back to Dubai to spend the weekend with Lisa & Kenny before flying out to London on Tuesday.  How exciting!!

Dhow cruise boat - next time round perhaps

A few of the dolphins

Snorkelling spot 

No sunnies, no bunny ears - what is going on Jim?

We went through the arch - spectacular scenery

After the beauty parlour