First BIG outing in Oman

Well, we finally have come around to setting up a blog of our new chapter in life. And the trip I took this weekend is definitely reason to share with you the absolute exquisiteness of Oman. Shawna and I had planned a surf trip over to the open coastline so I could sample some of Oman's finest in the area of waves, but seeing as it is still very hot in Muscat and Shawna did not want to endure the heat with the kids, nor did she want to be holed up in a hotel while I surfed (not to mention me having to surf alone in unknown conditions), I ended up going with Mark Avery, father of three students at TAISM, who had extensively explored the northern coastline that faces the open Arabian Sea, and two guys, Lorne, another surfer from Muscat, and Andrew, a South African surfer living in Dubai. And what a trip it was...

Thursday, 1 September 2005
Mark picked me up at 3:30 a.m. for the four hour drive to Asaylah, about 80 kms from Sur. The first two hours of darkness robbed me the opportunity to see some spectacular geology, though I was to pick up the sights on the way home. Words almost cannot describe the terrain we crossed--rugged, beautiful, and grand are a few attempts to describe the mountains that jutted and ridged around the wadi we drove through before dropping into the desert and northern most part of the Wahiba Sands. The temperature drastically changed here too; no longer was it even remotely near the oppressive heat it was in Muscat. The morning was, well, cool, almost to the point of pulling long pants out of the backpack! We travelled through a very long oasis south of Ibra; it is vertually a wide strip of trees and green fed by subterranean rivers and springs that exit into the sea south of al Ashkarah. The sunrise over the Eastern Mountains was one of the most magnificient I had even seen.


We entered Asaylah shortly after 7 a.m.--you would not know by the look of the environment around that you were on the Arabian Sea, the desert extends to the water's edge. We turned north and drove about 15 kms to a road out to a fishing hut, Asaylah Point. This place is a sweeping bay with three dominant breaks. There is a defined wave as you enter the bay, a nice wave inside the point, and a loooong wave out on the point (in the right conditions which we, unfortunately did not catch other than a highly unusual lack of wind).

This point is also the home (a beaching ground of sorts) for a great many fishermen and their boats. These guys drive their boats at near full speed right up onto the beach at the southern bend of the bay, right over the rocks, at high tide! The people we encountered there were very friendly and giving, offering us very nice fish for 1 Real (about 2 1/2 dollars or so); I'm talking snapper and grouper and brim--sizable fish! We almost took the offer, but saved it for another day. A bunch of kids grouped around us, wholly interested in our boards. Mark knows a bit of Arabic, so he chatted with them; the only thing I know competently is shucran, thank you, which I used when the father of the boys gave me a rather nice shell. Another thing that was rather surreal was the temperature. I'd say it was a full 20 degrees fahrenheit cooler than Muscat. Also, when we hit the water, I NEARLY FROZE! The water temp. was no more than 65 or 68 degrees fahrenheit. Really. I was in utter disbelief. Mark explained that the Kareef, or monsoon, generates a great upwelling that pushes the cooler water, and a whole heap of nutrients, to the surface.

The surf was somewhat small, chest to head high, but very fun. We surfed the main point and moved to the inside cove when the tide was high. The water was, of course, very clear, and the entire place was abundant with sealife. I cannot tell you how many sea turtles I saw, and over the course of two days I saw 4 manta rays, one had to exceed 4 feet across, jumping out of the water (and NO this is not another dolphin story dear friends!). I was surrounded with so much life that it threw me into an absolute state of peace with life. I felt so alive!!!

We had made reservations at a Best Western up in Ras al Hadd, but changed plans when we were able to secure a room at a government run youth hostel south in al Ashkarah. So at the end of the day (well, 1 o'clock), after four good hours of surfing, we decided to check in and rest a bit.

Passing through al Ashkarah, there was no way to not notice the port where small fishing boats and large dhows (big, pirate-like boats that, come to learn, are the mother-boats to the smaller fishing boats.) were moored. The only thing placing the port in the present was the humongous breakwater, constructed entirely of great, four-pronged pieces of concrete, surrounding the inner harbor. These concrete objects looked like giant jacks, like what you'd play with with a bouncy ball. Incredible to see. After that was the beach, where, to our dismay, the surf was almost twice the size it was at Asaylah! Solid 2-3 foot overhead (approx. 6-8 foot+ faces), nice form, and nobody, AND I MEAN NOBODY, out. We checked in, rested for an hour and hit it.


That night, the guys and I enjoyed a huge dinner of fish, salads, biryani rice, chipatti bread, two 1.5 liter bottles of water, and freshly blended fruit drinks for O.R. 9 (9 reals, or the equivalent of about $23. It was more food than we could eat, and it sent us into a food induced coma.

Friday, 2 September 2005
We got an early start to the surf and went back to the beachbreak at al Ashkarah. It still had some size, but the tide was very high already, so we only spent about an hour there before the waves were washed by the tide. We proceeded back to Asaylah where a nice and shapely chest high beachbreak was reeling up the beach at the entrance to the bay. That was fun. The waves pushed through the bay and rifled down the beach toward this big rock jutting into the water. Some waves (I caught one) even wrapped around the rock and continued into a smaller cove. Whipping around the rock was a bit sketchy, bit fun. There were so many waves coming through there that it was literally non-stop surfing: catch a wave, paddle back out, turn around and catch another, and continue the foray! We surfed this place for a good two hours, only getting out with the insistence of spaghetti arms, throbbing backs, and rumblies in the tumblies. We ate and decided to adventure up the coast a little, to "see what we could see."

The northern Omani coastline along the Arabian Sea is about as diverse a terrain as you could ever find; one moment you are looking at empty, white beaches, and the next you are presented with majestic cliffs that jut out and supremely tower over the crystal blue sea. Mark made it a point to show us a few, and I tried my darnedest to capture the grandeur, but words do the scene no justice. We almost lost interest in looking for surf when we encountered the lookout point in al Kahbbah.
This place is an exposed coral reef, eons old, and is an archeological site for ancient sealife, sediment strata, and first terrestrian life forms. And it is easy to see why. All you have to do is look down at the ground you are walking on. Amazing. However, the nudging within us to find an elusive point drove us on.

We continued up the coastline to A'Haddah and, three kms passed the town, turned off-road and headed toward a very rustic community and, passed it, a sizable hill, to another monumental cliff, revealing a hidden cove Mark had wanted to check out. The discovery was breath taking. There wasn't any surf, or none to really try to traverse a narrow goat trail to attempt, but we stood in solemn amazement at the view. We could see all the way up to Ras al Jinz, also known as "Turtle Beach"--one of the largest sea turtle nesting grounds in the world--about 10 kms to the north, and further still but the coast wrapped eastward, and far, far down the coast southward. The geology was incredible too, as wadi after wadi opened up to the sea, creating a trench effect throughout this plateau we were on. It was like a mini-Grand Canyon that revealed itself to the ocean. We could find no easy way to descend, and we were itching for one last surf before heading home, so we decided to retraced our steps to Asaylah where, with the outgoing tide, we were sure to catch, well... something.

The point started to line up with the lower tide, but it was MUCH different than the preceeding day. The lower tide revealed all the rocks we had to wade out over, no easy feat. However, once out, though not as consistently lined up as it could be, possibly due to the swell which was more straight on and not as much from the south, was a great deal of fun. Well worth the return visit. We surfed another two hours and then, with exhausted acceptance, began the looong journey home.

Mark was a wealth of information about Oman. He's a geologist in a past life, so he explained in detail the geologic formations we passed; and there were a great many. For it being a desert, Oman is in NO way barren. Marvelous dune structures in the northern Wahiba ornamented the land, though I was told that in the interior of the Wahibe, the dunes can reach an excess of 300 meters tall! And the mountains in this area are a blackish, with streaks of red and brown--rich with metals and mineral deposits. As we neared Muscat just at dusk, we saw the Western range that includes Nizwa and perimeters the Empty Quarter. These mountains are limestone and just as towering. This trip only provoked my interest to explore this amazing land I am now a part of, and we will!

I hope this has not been too long for you, but it was an overwhelming experience. It felt like I was gone weeks in just two days...