Back in Muscat again. It’s like Ground hog day – but not exactly! Same place, different tour. Today, we are on yet another tour with the same group of folks from Cruise Critic. This time, however Arizona is the tour leader. We are dreading it, but what can we do? We’re just going to stay in our cone of adventure and try to ignore the rest of the whiners. That’s the plan.
The morning gets off to a slightly rough start as we make our way off the pier. This operating procedures here are odd – it’s a commercial port, so we can’t walk out to the gate (which isn’t all that far away, to be sure, but rules are rules), but must use the port shuttle, which is a little 16 passenger van. Once you board the van, they drive you 100 yards – kid you not – to the “welcome center” where we all have to get off and go through security screening – then re-board the van at the other end of the building to drive about 1/4 mile to the front gates. Totally strange, but not an option to skip it. Thus, disembarkation tends to get a bit backed up because of the size of the vans and this awkward process.
We know this, and of course have planned ahead. Even though its brutally hot again and we risk standing outside for a while, we still get on an early shuttle and arrive outside the front gates about 25 minutes early. Not everyone is so buttoned up apparently, because Arizona and 4 other group folks don’t make it outside the gates until well after our 8am meeting time. During the wait, a small tussle comes up when Ann is speaking to the guides about the itinerary. She is hell bent on going to a beach to swim and wants to do so at the end of the tour. She has mentioned this in the email she sent to all of us concerning the tour, and it does say we will go to a beach in the afternoon in the itinerary from the tour company. We don’t care – we’d actually prefer not to go – but we’re along for the ride and figure worse case scenario, we’ll sit in the van while the others swim. But the guides are having none of it because 1) the beach is on the other side of the town, in the exact opposite direction of the port, 2) it will be incredibly hot after noon, too hot to be on the beach, and 3) the tour circuit takes us to a beach first (because it is at the farthest end of our tour and makes the most sense in terms of visiting all the sites). They wrangle on and on about it, but we just fade out into the background. Whatever decision is made, we’ll live with it – as long as we don’t miss the other main sights – and the market at the end!
The rest of the crew finally make it out the gates, and we all board the van to start our tour. We end up with the unenviable wheel well seats – but whatever, I’ll deal with it. I don't really mind sitting with my knees elevated – its actually more comfortable for me most of the time. Our cute little new (4 months in the business) 24 year old tour guide starts us off with a good history of the area and country, and explains we’re off to the beach first to take a look around. We know the route (from the HoHo bus), and we know it will take about 25 minutes to get there – so we sit back and watch the mountains and buildings fly by us once more. Unfortunately, during this time, Ed has a coughing attack as his respiratory illness is winding down, his coughing is ratcheting up, and gets worse when he is in and out of the hot and the cold. We do what we can, cough drops, water, coke – and he does end up blowing his nose – which is met with disgust by the British couple in the seat in front of us. Sorry! We know it sounds awful, but we can’t help it – and quite frankly, this is how we both got our illness – from sitting on another van with sick people at the start of our first cruise.
At the beach, we have 10 minutes to go “frolic” in the sand and water. Have at it folks. We sure as heck did not come to Oman to go to the beach – and let’s face it – it’s only about 8:30am and its already 95 degrees with high humidity. Thanks, but we’ll stick close to the van. While the rest of the bus runs for the beach, we walk along the promenade a bit and manage to take a couple of great shots of a woman in full abaya and birka on the beach. How do they stand it?
She walks a ways, then plops down on the sand and begins to read or something. That has just got to be beyond hot.
As we turn back toward the van, we see the the Brits talking with Arizona, and I see the guy pantomiming coughing and nose blowing. Again, our apologies – but as it turns out – they wanted to change seats, and there happens to be a seat right up front by Arizona (who by the way also has a nasty cough). We see they are changing, and as we get on I go to them and apologize, but tell them Ed’s not contagious – as he is not. As we are going back to our seats, we hear Arizona telling them she has a cough, but she’s not contagious either. Yeah right. We probably got the damn disease from her since we’ve been cooped up in vans with her for the last 10 days.
The bright side of this story though is that the Brits have given up their good seats, so we move out of the wheel well and up one row. Cool.
Our next stop is the Opera Hall, which is gorgeous, all marble and – as is most of the architecture – blindingly white. All this white marble makes everything shimmer and appear wet everywhere. It’s really quite a mirage – so to speak.
5 minutes here and we’re back on the van heading to the Mosque. And, lo and behold, the Brits decide they want to move back. Well, too bad, too sad, we’ve got their seats – and while I have a little twinge of bus etiquette (do we give them back their seats?), I lean toward the use it or lose it theory and stay where we are. They in turn just plop down in seats already taken by others at the back of the van. No bus etiquette at all! Once the seat scrum is all settled, they shout up to us “please don’t take offense,” to which I just wave – what do we care? We’re happier here without them anyway.
Off we go to the Muscat mosque.
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