Salalah

After two days at sea we were ready for our first shore excursion and made plans to meet up on the deck we disembark from at 7am, faces shining and hands & teeth clean.  The port was not much to look at, just a dry, dusty port and over 10kms to the actual town.  We had to take a shuttle bus for the 5 minute drive to the port gates where we then had to fend for ourselves.  We were told the taxi ride into town should cost around 5 whatever the local currency is (approx $15) but the taxis could charge anywhere up to $50-$60 and twice that much for the return trip just because they could.

We left Ellen in charge of the negotiating as she has lived many years in Oman & knew the lay of the land.  She successfully negotiated the first taxi to 8 local currency but the problem was there were 6 of us so the first 3 headed off into town leaving Ellen, Roger & I to find another one.  The next one she didn’t do quite so well and only got him to 10  but we were anxious to be on our way & not lose the others so we agreed.

The drive into town was down a long straight road with a smattering of date palms, a few hills and lots of sand.  As Roger put it, it looked very biblical and indeed it did.  The driver spoke reasonable English and decided that Roger must have been a wealthy man so therefore thought he should have at least 4 wives.  I got the impression Roger was not so keen on this idea, can’t imagine why.  When the taxi dropped us off at the souq we had agreed to meet at, there was no sign of the others so we wandered around the closed market, since it was still only early, then down the beach which had nice sand but wild sea since it is just coming into the monsoon season.  The beach front properties were nothing like Hedges Ave, they were very derelict and in a bad state of repair making this town look even more godforsaken  than it already was.

Finally, with great joy, we saw the others come strolling down the road, they had been dropped at an entirely different place but managed to make their way back.  By this time the souq was starting to open.  One street consisted entirely of tailors, mostly menswear, so shop after shop was tailoring.  I thought these people must be extremely well dressed!  Another street were barbers who will give you a shave, nose, ear & hair trim, scalp massage and pampering for a mere $3 if you bargain.  So well dressed & well groomed men must reside here. Most of the other shops sold frankincense, sandalwood, perfume oils, burners and textiles like scarves, cloth hats, tops etc.  Most shops had frankincense burning at the front so there was a haze of smoke wafting around the streets giving a heady exotic spicy smell and invoking the mystic of Arabia.

This is of course where frankincense comes from and what made this place extremely wealthy in ancient times.  This is almost the only place, along with a few places in Yemen & Somalia that the ugly, knarled trees of the Boswllia family will grow.  They are not much to look at and I find it hard to believe they would be so valuable but it is the resin from the tree that is the basis of incense.

Temples of the ancient world would burn large quantities of incense to mask the smells of the animals they sacrificed & to create an atmosphere of reverence.

The camel caravans would come through here, buy the incense then travel north to Petra in Jordan and on to the Roman Empire.  It was then resold in Jerusalem, Egypt, through out the Med as well as India & China.

Salalah is also famous for being the birth place of the currant Sultan of Oman, Sultan Qaboos who was born & educated here before being sent to Sandhurst then at the age of 30 staged a coup and overthrew his father.  Children of today!

Jobs tomb is nearby, somewhere out there in the middle of nowhere.  If you google Salalah you can see photos of what it looks like as we never went there but I think many of our fellow passengers did.

After the souq three of us Jon, Jo and myself caught a taxi into the main part of town.  We thought we were going to the spice market and Ellen again had negotiated for us but the three who knew anything about Oman went back to the ship leaving us three who knew nothing about it and having no idea where we were going, disappear into the mist.  It turns out we weren’t the only ones not knowing where we were going as neither did the taxi driver! He was determined to drop us off at the big mosque & go back to get the others.  After much confusion and trying to make him understand the word ‘spice’ we were happy just to get out at the nearest set of shops.  It wasn’t a bad place in the end as we found ourselves in another market. This one was a huge fruit & veg souq which lead onto a fish market then into the meat market.  It was all under cover but that was all, there was no refrigeration and it was as hot as hell and very, very humid.  All the meat was hanging off the ceiling and being cut up on big slabs about waist high. On one of these slabs was a guy sitting almost cross legged with an extremely sharp knife wedged between his toes as he use both hands to hold the meat and slice off the fat in one quick movement.  There was another guy with a jack hammer and he was jack hammering a concert wall which ran around the outside just near where all the meat was hanging.  Dust was going everywhere but didn’t seem to worry anyone.  In one corner was a pile of goat heads, not sure if they ate them or they were just surplus to requirements.

Jo & I were the only females there and were feeling decidedly uncomfortable but still managed to snap a few photos, pretending we were taking them of each other. There were hundreds of pairs of eyes trained on us and even Jon didn’t escape attention as an Indian man followed him everywhere, stopped when we stopped and gazed into his eyes.  With the noise & smell & activity of the market it just couldn’t be captured in a photo but I sure wasn’t hanging around to video it.  Just around the corner was a café with men sitting at the tables playing cards.  On one table were two shotguns just lying there.  By this stage we thought it was time to leave.

We were very pleased with ourselves as we successfully negotiated a cheap taxi ride back to the boat and were safely aboard before she sailed which was rather handy. On the way we saw stalls on the roadside selling coconuts, bananas, guava & papaya.  Apparently this is unique to Salalah.  Our taxi driver had two wives & 8 children, 7 to one wife and one to another.  Jon thought that one wife must have been for breeding & the other was for fun.

We were now faced with three days at sea which sounds a long time but they seem to be passing without any effort at all and as we zoom from one activity to another we barely have time to relax.  We have attended history lectures, astronomy lessons, beauty treatments (well, I have anyway) as well as seeing the fantastic nightly shows, even two in one evening on either side of the ship so we have to quickly finish dinner then zip to one side to watch the string quartet then zip to the other to catch the Italian singer. Today was the culinary demonstration from our Master Chef Alfredo Marzi who showed us how to whip up a three course dinner in just twenty minutes that went for over an hour (not sure how that works) so I missed the free slimming seminar on how to beat the body fat blues!

We have just sailed through one of the most dangerous waters in the world and thankfully no sign of pirates yet. This morning on our pound around the decks doing our health kick we saw an officer with a pair of binoculars gazing towards the horizon.  I jokingly asked if she were looking for pirates and she very seriously said yes!  Crikey. We had Yemen to our starboard and Somalia to our port and were sailing in the IRTC (internationally recommended transit corridor).  This passage is protected by 40 different nations with war ships & helicopters patrolling these waters.  We have passed a lot of boats, mostly cargo & vehicular boats with the odd warship or two.  The sea has had fairly big swells, enough to throw you off balance occasionally and we watched the swimming pool one day as it proceeded to empty itself, it was sloshing from side to side so much.  One woman remarked to a crew member how impressed she was that they had installed a wave pool and she was serious.  Another complained to a Stewart that they were doing a Zumba class when the boat was rocking and it just wasn’t good enough. There are some right whingers on this tub, I tell you.  We have had laundry rage on our deck as one washing machine didn’t work for ages.  Almost had a mutiny until they replaced it with another machine from a lower deck, then the iron blew up.

Anyway, back to our route.  We are now in the Red sea (think they were colour blind as I have never seen such blue sea, it is hard to describe but we finally decided it is the colour of deep sapphire). Yesterday, Sunday, we transited the Gulf of Aden (where the IRTC is) then the Bab el Mandeh (go on, get your maps out, it‘s where it looks like the land almost touches together).  We passed the volcanic island of Perim Mayyun which, in the prehistoric past, erupted & blocked the Bab el Mandeb causing the Red Sea to evaporate.  Incredible really as this is a huge sea, no sign of land and about 50 - 700 metres deep. Water temp is 29 degrees and air temp a very pleasant 32 degrees.  Sea is very calm now, like a mill pond so Zumba can safely go ahead.

This area is known as The Doldrums as many a sailing ship has been becalmed in these waters due to very light wind conditions. We are now on a north westerly heading with Sudan & Ethopia off to the port & Yemen to the Starboard.  Sounds so romantic but in reality we can’t see a bloody thing, just lots of water.  I have sent Jon up to play bingo while I finish this log.  I’m hoping he will win us tickets to one of the tours or the $1,000 prize money.

We have one more day at sea before making land in Safaga, Egypt where we will travel to see the Valley of the Kings, then things get a bit more busier with frequent ports.

Did I mention we have one or three thousand old folk aboard?  It does make it difficult to get past them in narrow corridors and trying to avoid the zimmer frames, wheelchairs & walking sticks becomes an art form. We found out today that since the ship left port in Sydney in May five people have already died and 17 have been sent home for illness.  The infirmary downstairs is full and there are two people there with water on the lungs.  They have already used up their medical insurance so at the next port, which is Egypt, they get tossed off.  They won’t be able to fly home so not sure what will happen to them.  Couldn’t imagine a worse place to be thrown off.  We are picking that a few more may pop off as we have a long day in Egypt traveling to the Valley of the Kings which is a 3 ½ hour trip one way and once there is extremely hot, then the next day another long day in Jordan traveling to Petra.  I think the heat may kill off a few more dears.

A few nights we have enjoyed the music in the wheelhouse bar.  They are a Canadian couple and really good, playing mostly jazz.  Well they also get tossed off at the next port as it has been decided they are far to upmarket for our crowd.  I may also mention that the quietest place on board this ship is the nightclub.  I think they struggle to get more than 5 & 3 of them are staff. 

We do have internet on the boat but it is via satellite which is vastly different to a landline.  It is extremely slow and very expensive. It took nearly 20 minutes to paste my blog into a new post and upload 2 photos.  At .50c a minute it won’t take long to chew thru my $180 worth of internet time so you won’t be seeing many pictures or any face book or answer to any emails unless urgent until we get to Europe where we can access the internet ashore. Even then, as we only have a few hours in each port I don’t think I will use much of it for internet time  but will do my best.