Muscat, Oman (Day 2) - Mar 15, 2013

To better see outside of Muscat we participated in a Holland America Excursion for day 2 - The 4 Wheel Drive Safari to Wadi Shab & Gazelle Reserve. A nice sunny hot day greeted us as we stepped into our 4 wheel drive Nissan vehicle, we were 6 vehicles in total in our convoy, Jan and I sat with just one other guest in our SUV so we had lots of room. We headed out of town to the fishing village of Quriyat to view the catch of the day, great photo opportunities there, we then visited a Gazelle Reserve, which really was a bit of waste of time, more on that later, we then had incredible swim at a remote beach on the Indian Ocean, followed by a picnic lunch at the Tiwi and the magnificent dry river beds. This was a good ship excursion, not a great one, overall a “C+”. Our driver did not speak english so the only time we got any information from our guide was at the stops, even his english was not great and he spoke very quietly - so hard to hear what he did say. Our itinerary read for the Gazelle Reserve, “meet and talk to our friendly Rangers and learn all about the illusive gazelles” - well the rangers were the illusive ones as we did see a single one, oh they were there but decided not to come out of their little compound and greet us - a bit frustrating for our guide. The amazing thing here was that although Gazelles only come at dusk and dawn, our guide did find one running across the river bed, so we were able to get at least one picture. We move on to our highlight - the 45 minute swim in the Indian Ocean, warm, calm and just beautiful is how I sum up this stop in the excursion. Our stop at the Wadi Shab with the picnic lunch was also very good - HAL picnic lunched are huge and very good, so that was great, the sights of the dry river bed we also very good but in order to really see the good parts you had to take a little boat over to the other side and then walk along a nice palm treed path. The “but” part is that this HAL excursion was not cheap, not many are, but you had to pay in the local currency the 80 cents per person to go over (one way), fortunately we had the currency and we did this, not many did so many did not go over. Now why HAL could not have a voucher system and cover this minor cost as part of the excursion price in beyond me - did I say that it was 80 cents, this is just crazy. Overall during the drive there was great scenery displayed around every turn, with a couple of great tour highlights, but I could not find myself tipping for this excursion, based on the buy in price, we only kind of had a guide, our driver was okay - even though I had to ask him to sit up as he looked like he was about ready to doze off behind the wheel. Finally because of the fiasco at the reserve we ended up back at the ship almost an hour earlier than stated, so not an effective use of time as when you are paying these prices for HAL tours you tend to look much harder at value for money and today the two did just not equal up. After all that our time here was great, the people are just so friendly and everyone seems to have a good pleasant life, health care and education are free and here is the big one, there are no personal income taxes here or any sales tax. Hmm, maybe we should get ourselves a good Sultan and get rid of all the tax money we pay our overstuffed politicians, oh I know if that was the case we would have nothing to talk about and the media would have nothing to report on. Just a thought (imagine)... Some pictures.