Salalah, Oman - Mar 17, 2013

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Salalah is a coastal city in the Omani province of Dhofar. It has a population of about 200,000 and is the second largest city in Oman. Salalah is a traditional stronghold and the birthplace of the current Sultan, Qaboos bin Said. He traditionally lives here in Salalah rather then in Muscat where he has officially lived since he ascended the throne in 1970. The big selling souvenir item here of all time is Frankincense. There is forest here that is listed on the UNESCO heritage site that contains the aromatic resin for which the Frankincense is obtained from that is said to be worth a good walk through. Not for us today, we were met with another beautiful sunny day and after a mandatory post shuttle mini van ride to the port gate, the entire independent traveler contingent was met by a huge taxi stand of price gouging taxi drivers. So with this captive audience at hand all needing taxis to go anywhere you pretty much had to agree to their price fixing gouging. Oman and Salalah are in the process of moving tourism to the top of their revenue generating list as the oil reserves are rumored to disappear within the next 20 years, so they really need to improve the way they treat westerners. Case in point (by the way the taxis here are not metered - so this may be a good place to start), our initial taxi ride, some 10 to 15 kilometers cost us a firm 40 USD, this was supposed to be from the port to a mall in town, the taxi driver dropped us off at a mall, not a great mall but a mall. He then lied to us and told us that he would come back in two hours to drive us half this distance to the Hilton Hotel for a firm $25.00 USD, he told us that he was a good honest guy and his price was the best we would get and not to talk to the drivers outside the mall as they would be charging us $10.00 USD a head to take us to the Hilton. Well after an hour in this lousy mall I did go and talk to the taxi drivers outside the mall and the driver was willing to drive us to the Hilton for $5.00 Oman Reals (Sp?), US equivalent of about $15.00. So whether our original driver came back or not we no longer cared as he was not honest or a good guy, we left the mall with our new driver and headed to our haven destination of the Hilton Hotel for some R & R. This hotel had it all, a beautiful swimming pool (including a water slide), great beach chairs, a great beach area (with umbrellas) both grassy area and huge white sandy beach leading to the Arabian Sea. It also had a fabulous beach side restaurant overlooking the beach and the sea. Now I was able to call the hotel from the mall to see if they did have a daily drop in option and yes they did for a fee of $4.00 Oman Reals per person (about $12.00 USD PP), this was fine so off we went. Upon going to the Health Club Facility at the hotel, they informed me that the fee was going to be $7.00 Oman Reals PP ($21.00). I was not happy with this conflicting fee so I gave them my story and the discussions along the way and then he asked if we were from the cruise ship and I said, yes - his response was oh, for you there is no charge, the cruise ship in port had a special arrangement with the hotel. Later I realized that there was another cruise ship in port, a small high end German Ship that must of had an agreement with the hotel, in that Bob and I look german they thought that we were on this ship, so we played a bit of their game by answering the question correctly, yes we were from “the” cruise ship. So we had a nice complementary stay at the Hilton Hotel and with our new savings Jan and I had a couple’s massage in the beach tent, right on the beach with the crashing waves. We also had a fabulous fish and chips lunch at the beach side restaurant. Now I must mention that yes we did have a swim in the Arabian Sea, the yellow flags were flying to warn us that the rip tide was at a medium or moderate level. Working our way through the surf was a bit challenging but manageable but as we were out there a very good size wave did come in and with it it took Jan’s legs out from under her and then the wave hit her pretty good causing her to go off balance and do a couple of somersaults under the water - ah not good. When I looked at where she should have been all I saw were her feet sticking out of the water, I grabbed her and brought her to her feet - I didn’t mention that there was a huge amount of sea weed out there as well. So picture Jan a bit disoriented in the water with a very large amount of sea weed all over her with the waves still crashing in, I was able to get her safely back to the beach but she did loose her sun glasses (second pair this trip). Jan is fine, a bit rustled up and her ears are still plugged but the massage was good for her, she wanted to make sure that I mentioned this in the blog. So back to the wonderful Taxi drivers who wanted to charge us $5.00 USD each to go back the five kilometers back to the port. By now I am sick and bit tired of these price games and told the guy, I have $4.40 Oman Reals left ($13.00) and that was all he was going to get and after some discussion he finally agreed. Back at the port he still wanted at least $5.00 OR’s, you could only imagine my response to this. For what we did, we had a good day here relaxing pool side at the beach at the Hilton Hotel. We forgot the camera today so our pictures for this blog are ones provided from out travel companions Bob and Leslie, special thanks to them.