Oman: The blog

Well, I've run out of pictures from my trip. I didn't post every picture I took, just a lot of them. 

To wrap my story up: I ended up coming back to America early. Rather than staying until late May, I came home at the end of February. There were a few reasons for this, first of all I missed Jenna and wanted to see her. Oman was also starting to warm up again, and the prospect of hot weather wasn't very appealing to me. I had a great time in Oman, but all good things must come to an end (especially with hot temperatures looming!). 

I'm really glad I came back when I did, not only to see Jenna but also to get my law school plans figured out. Coming back early allowed me to visit my top two schools again, and to pick the school I'm going to in the fall: Vermont Law School (located in South Royalton, Vermont). It's the top environmental law school in the nation, and probably the world. It's also not that far from where Jenna lives, just about 2 hours away. I start in just a few months, and have 3 long years ahead of me. Hopefully time will go fast and I'll find the career niche I've been looking for all of these years.

I hope you enjoy reading about what I did in my 2 months in Oman, looking back it was an adventure I'm glad I took. I met some great people, had some good times, and had an adventure that I'll remember forever. 

If you want to read my blog from the beginning of my trip, you should start from my first post. The blog isn't strictly chronological, but it does kind of move that way. You can click on any of the pictures to enlarge them, and they're all awesome so you should!

Steffen, Elizabeth and I go to Tiwi

Tiwi is a little town on the Omani coast. It is at the mouth of a wadi (Arabic word for 'valley'), one of the larger wadi's that I visited in my time in Oman. This wadi was known for its freshwater pools, which are a hike from the wadi's entrance. We left the car at the Wadi's entrance, down by the town. There were numerous Omanis out as well enjoying the water.

Heading to the pools:

The wadi was huge. It had sheer sides surrounding a winding path leading down from the mountains. It was super wide at the entrance, and gradually got more and more narrow as we walked up it. 

After awhile we reached a point where you either had to walk/swim through the water, or take the high ground. I didn't feel like swimming at this point (we had already swam in the ocean earlier) so I took the high ground while Elizabeth and Steffen chose to swim.

The water was crystal clear from my vantage point, you could see the boulders deep below the surface. Steffen and Elizabeth swam for awhile and I scouted ahead. There was a rock ledge over the pool, which Steffen decided would be a good place to jump from (and I encouraged him so that I could take a picture!)

Eventually I got too high above the wadi to see Steffen and Elizabeth below. But I took a picture anyway.

And that's about all I remember. 

Nizwa

After our night in the Wadi, we were in Nizwa. We found a pretty cheap place with spacious rooms and big beds. We dropped our stuff off and went to the center of the city, where the fort and souq were located.

Nizwa is located 100 kilometers or so in the interior of Oman. It's a conservative area, with a strong religious tradition. It is also known as an area that is full of 'jinn' or evil spirits. People say that the place is haunted and some people avoid the area for that reason.

Nizwa fort is a huge round structure, with plenty of defensive features to stop invaders. My favorite part were the 'murder holes' in the path leading to the center of the fort. What's a 'murder hole', you ask? A 'murder hole' is a hole directly above a secured door where defenders of the fort can rain down hot oils on top of intruders trying to break down said door. In Nizwa, they would use boiling date syrup, from the many date trees in the area. The corridors up to the top of the fort were heavily defended. They were narrow and had numerous turns in them, preventing battering rams from being easily brought through. At critical junctures they had thick wooden doors with spike pits immediately surrounding the doors. They also had murder holes above them, where the defenders could pour boiling hot date syrup onto the invaders. Basically it went like this: if you got to a door you might have boiling oil poured on you. If you managed to get through the door, you had to watch out for a spike pit on the other side of it. Once you were over the spike pit you probably had 6 more doors to get through, with defenses just like that. It wouldn't have been much fun to try to siege one of these forts.

Murder hole, looking down:

Some of the fort doors that we came across in our trip:

Big:

Small:

Nizwa has a really large fort, with an inner sanctum that could support numerous people. Here is a picture from the inside of the fort, showing just how large it is.

Just outside of the fort area is a large souq, or market. They have a souq for everything someone might want to buy. They have nicknacks for tourists, fruit, veggies, goats, and dates. I was craving dates for some reason (the only time I had ever eaten them before was in Jordan when I visited Steffen there) so I went in. The place was huge, and full of dates. However, there was only one guy in there working, I'm not sure where the other people were. He was old, had wispy white hair and a big cataract in one of his eyes. He didn't speak English, but Steffen had taught me the word for 'date' before I went in (not to mention that if I was going into the date market that I was probably looking for dates). He sold me a kilo (2.2 pounds) for one rial (roughly $2.25). We ate a few of them together, me and my new buddy, and he talked about something while I listened. Then he tried selling me date syrup, (which made me think of the 'murder holes' in the fort) for one rial. First he smeared a little on his hand which he licked off. After licking it off he made a whooping sound and slapped his knee. I think he was trying to show that date syrup made a man strong! He then offered a little to me, motioning for me to lick it off. I did, then I slapped my knee. I motioned that I wasn't interested (the universal open palm wave of "no, thanks") which made him try even harder, no doubt strong off of the date syrup. I smiled and busted out with my kilo before he could give me anymore of his pitch. 

Picture of Steffen in the goat souq, after their big weekly sale:

Selling vegetables in the souq:

In the area around Nizwa, we also explored some of the fortresses that dotted the hill sides. We climbed up to one that was near the road, and pulled out the metal detector. We didn't find anything at this particular place, but we didn't stay too long as it was kind of raining.

However, we did find an old silver coin at another site. It was a collection of ruins along the side of the highway. We stopped and after a half hour of searching we found what appears to be a silver coin with arabic writing on it (it was pretty tarnished). Steffen thinks he found what coin it was in a book at the book store - if it is it would be 500 years old.

After 3 or 4 days in Nizwa we headed back to Muscat. During our time spent in Nizwa, Steffen had arranged for a place to stay, with a guy he met on the plane flight to Oman. His name was Dave, and they had met in the Dubai airport. Dave invited Steffen to hang out with him once he was in Oman, and gave Steffen his phone number. Steffen had talked to Dave a few times in those first weeks and Dave was nice enough to let us stay at his place until we found something. He lived in one of the many nice compounds on embassy row, near some of the nicer hotels. It was a big place, with 3 bedrooms. Not only did he have a great place to live, but he hooked us up with the ex-pat network in Muscat. Through this network we met Elizabeth (who I've mentioned a few times in this blog) and my friend Christiana (who I met at a party over there). Dave was a great cook and we ate like kings while we lived there. He was also the one that told us about the Wahiba sands trip that I've already written about. What a generous guy, all around. It was a stroke of good luck to meet him, and all the good things that resulted from that meeting.

As an American, if you ever plan on moving overseas I would suggest making a connection with the ex-pat network in the place you are going to be. It's a great way to make friends, and to learn tons of stuff about the place you are living. You'll learn about places to live, places to eat, what to see, where stuff is cheap, where the jobs are, etc. I had nothing but good experiences with the ex-pats I met in Oman, and I was surprised just how quickly I made friends there. I'm not sure how you make that connection exactly, Steffen and I kind of lucked into it by the chance meeting with Dave, but people working in the US embassy would be a great place to start. Just some advice!

Some of my friends currently living in Oman

Here's another short update for my blog. These are some of the people I've mentioned, or are going to mention in upcoming blogs.

Ibrahim and Steffen: Ib is an Omani doctor, and was our roommate for the month before I left. I'm pretty sure that Steffen is intentionally blinking.

Dave: An American working for a contractor over in Oman. He was gracious enough to welcome us into his home for a few weeks and on many adventures during my time in Oman. Definitely a character! :)

The La Bellas: Elizabeth and her parents. I spent more than a few nights eating their food and talking about life in the Middle East. An great group of people and they make amazing spaghetti! (and they all look a little pissed off in this picture :) )

Elizabeth and I: She liked to punch me. Alot. 

Christiana: An English teacher who I met early in my trip. She tried to get me a job, and gave me the opportunity to volunteer in her class. It was a rewarding way to meet some Omani women!

I really enjoyed getting to know these people, especially the welcome feeling I got from the ex-pat community in Oman. It was amazing that once you meet one person from that group, suddenly you know everyone. Especially Elizabeth, who made me do stuff while Steffen was gone! Otherwise I might have just read books and eaten dried strawberries all day... though I did quite a bit of that anyway :)

In the area around Nizwa - week two in Oman

After almost a week in Mutrah, and living the good life in the Finar, we rented a car and busted out to Nizwa. Nizwa is one of Oman's major cities, and is approx 150 kilometers south of Muscat in the mountains. It was a scenic drive in our Yaris, weaving in and out of the mountain passes.

We headed for Nizwa in mid-afternoon, too late to do much site-seeing. So instead of staying in town, we decided to camp outside of Nizwa. Our first night was spent in Wadi Tanuf, one of the valleys surrounding the city. We parked the Yaris at the edge of the Wadi and walked in.

We hiked back on a small road, past a little hill top village. Goats grazed and kids ran around playing soccer.

After a few more turns of the road, we found an elevated area to pitch Steffen's tent (under the tree in the right side of the picture below). 

From another angle:

With the tent pitched, we started scouring the dry river bed for sticks and other burnables. A few trucks went past us, probably wondering what a couple of gringos were doing in their valley. Soon we had enough fuel, and Steffen (the former Eagle Scout) took the lead on building the fire.

It got dark quickly in the valley, soon the fire was the only light besides the moon and stars.

We had bought some meat and vegetables at Lulu (Oman's take on Walmart) before we left, which we packed in aluminum foil to cook. It was a good meal, sitting on the rocks around the fire. After that it was off to bed in Steffen's little tent. A cozy fit for two big guys like us!

The next morning I stoked the fire again. It had been a rough night for yours truly, I didn't sleep very well. I was so used to the lumpy beds of the Finar, not to mention all of the late night noises, that it was difficult to get used to sleeping on the ground and in the complete quiet of the Wadi. So I was up early, trying to get the fire going again.

We posed for some pictures:

After cleaning up our camp site, we hiked back to the car and the old city of Tanuf. There are two cities of Tanuf, the old city which is in ruins, and the new city built close to it. The old city was destroyed when the Sultan wrested control of the area from his father. Instead of rebuilding, the people there must have decided it would be easier to rebuild nearby. I had brought my metal detector all the way from the USA just for places like this!

Steffen surveying the scene, my trusty metal detector chilling in the shade:
We found some muscat (the old bullet, not the capital of Oman) balls and a bullet in the ruins of the old city. A man walked up with a herd of children surrounding him. They were a little curious what two Americans were doing poking around the old city with a metal detector. Steffen explained in Arabic, which brought more questions - why does he speak Arabic? They were suspicious, it was obvious even to the non-Arabic speaker. Steffen asked the man if his children would like the muscat balls that we found. The man said no, and that he didn't know what the muscat balls were. It was obvious that we were touching on territory we probably shouldn't. So we left, heading back to Nizwa.