A Little Late, or Day 118 in Muscat

I made plans to meet up with Ian and Wayne, my new accented friends, between 7-8 this morning.

I hoped really hard they would still be there when I got to their hotel at 9am... whoops.

Thankfully, they were stirring and ready to head out shortly. I was expecting the city to be pretty closed, and thinking I would just spend the day at the beach, but when I was walking to their place, the Mutrah Souq was bustling, and it didn't feel much like a Friday, so we decided to check that out instead.

After the souq, we split up. Ian and I headed to Qurm, a beach town that looks a lot smaller on the map than it actually is. After half an hour of walking down the beach, we got to a Starbucks. Very local, right? But it had "air con" and we got to rest up a bit.

We were supposed to meet at the Grand Hyatt at 12:30. Around 12:15, Ian and I realized that we really weren't close at all. We asked some teenagers for directions, and they offered us a ride. One of them was fluent in English, and we chatted about where he wanted to go to uni next year. We asked what they were up to, and they said they had been skipping Friday prayers to hang out and smoke. Maybe because they helped us out, Allah will forgive them?

We found Wayne outside the hotel, having a cigarette (like he is prone to do). He is a scuba diver, so has been trying to find a place to set up a dive. There was, supposedly, a dive shop at the Grand Hyatt, so he went directly there... but no luck. It had closed down.

After a failed attempt to just wander in and use their swimming pool, we took a taxi to Mumtaz Mahal, a fancier Indian place. It was delcious, and filling, and nearly 12 dollars! (That's quite a bit for food, but it was pretty darn delicious.)

They called a cab after our leisurely 2.5 hour meal, and we scooted back to Mutrah and the hotel. It was hot, so time for a siesta for Ian and me as Wayne, once again, tried to get to a dive shop.

He came back successful, I booked my room for the night for half the price of last night, and we headed out for a sunset stroll. I found some fort I wanted to climb up to, and they gamely followed along. There was a bit of a rock climb at the bottom, but we made it to an abandoned staircase that just went up the side of the cliff. It was probably my favorite experience of the day.

We continued on to a park (Al Riyam or something) with had an amusement park, as well as what I guessed was the watchtower. The road to it looked closed, but all the people around were fun to see.

We are going to a rooftop bar because they were feeling "a bit parched." More beautiful Muscat to see tomorrow!