Salalah was another port in Oman but it wasn't as pretty as Muscat.  Their turnabouts were planted with flowers, plants, and stonework. One even had nice grass and trees mounded up in a small hill fashion but for the most part the highways were long stretches of wide open desert with houses way off the road.  Salalah was a pretty dry and baron landscape but the Sultan has four palaces in the area, two of which we were able to view, his and his wife's.  That may be the secret to staying married, not only separate beds but separate palaces!  

We purchased a tour from the ship which was listed as Wadi Off Road and we were very grateful once we got past the guarded, safe gates of the port since there were over 300 taxis waiting for their new victims, I mean visitors, waiting outside the gate!  Although there was a sign posted just before you drove out of the port, I don't think any of the shuttle buses were stopping for you to view the list of approved taxi fares.   Lord have Mercy on those people getting mobbed by 300 Arabic drivers!  

Now our tour had come with a warning that if you had a bad back DO NOT TAKE THIS TOUR.  Well, we found out that was not to be.  This SUV we climbed into had a roll bar in it, which would have come in handy in Muscat, but we didn't need it today.  Nothing off-road about this trip and we lodged a complaint with the travel department since we expected nothing less than dry river bed runs and a little off road action.  Our roads were paved all the way!  

Even though it wasn't an off road adventure that day we did get to the Palace of the legendary Queen of Sheba, Khor Rouri.  These ancient ruins date back to the 2nd century and it was once the center of the lucrative frankincense trade route.  These trees grow only in Southern Arabia and a small part of northern Africa.   The coastal waterfront had a natural fortress made out of two high mountains with a break in the middle of them that allowed the ocean to flow into this small harbor.  The city sat high on an opposite mountain with a beach area below.  We had total run of the large ruins and they are still excavating today (I think things move a lot slower in these parts of the world).  

One of our first stops was a camel sighting on the beach.  Hundreds of camels were down on the beach and I don't blame them for hanging out there during the day instead of the desert heat.  The people who live up in the mountains bring their camels down to the beach for feeding every day and just like sheep, the camels know their owner's voice.  So when the owners come to retrieve them at the end of the day they follow.  We even saw small caravans of the camels walking back home later in the day.  The sight of all these camels on the beach was nothing but strange and it made for a great photo shoot.   

We also stopped by the old town of Taqah to view the castle and fort, which was high on the hill.  There was a man on our tour who had served in the army and his barracks were in an old building that sat across the street from the castle.  He got a good kick out of the fact that the building was still standing along with the bullet holes in the outside walls from 60 years ago.

We headed up and over the mountains to the Wadi Darbat where herds of goats, camels and donkeys live along the small riverbed.  During the rainy season this place floods and the surrounding vegetation comes to life.  The locals come for the day and weekend to picnic and camp out.  We also visited a natural spring and a bird sanctuary.  While at the natural spring we noticed a rather large sign about poisonous snails and the danger of swimming in the water.  Even though the water was fast flowing through the rock gorge and there were local kids swimming in it, I guess the snails could still get on you.  While walking around I noticed a rather large bone and tried to figure out if that was someone's dinner or the leftovers of a wild animal's body.   I kept walking and found some jaw bones with some teeth still attached and a few more bones.  By the looks of the bones, I guessed it was a wild camel that died - but then again maybe it was someone's dinner.

We were only in Salalah for five hours that day and initially that would seem like enough time to explore this baron land but just like Muscat there are many things to see and do in the area but too spread out to see in one day.  The population is listed as 197,169 but since we drove up the coast and not into the city you could have fooled me.  We passed a Hilton and a handful of other hotels on the way out of the port but they don't really look like a place that you would want to hang out for a week.  Not that the buildings, of what we could see, was hideous but there was such a baron stretch of land and desert that sat between the road and the property that it looked very uninviting.   Neighbors were few and far between too.  

Salalah supposedly has Job's tomb located outside the city to the west too, but I'm going to say that it's probably not since two other places claim his tomb too.  How many Jobs are there and was he real or just a fictional character in the bible?  I ended up buying a bedouin-handmade bowl with camel leather on the bottom with woven straw and thread with a design in it for $24 USD.  Their money is worth three times as much as ours, so it was only eight of their dollars.  My only thought was where in the suitcase is that going to go?  They told me I could use it to milk my goats and then drink the milk right from the bowl.  I'm thinking no for that one.  I didn't buy it for functionality but its uniqueness and beauty.  I wouldn't dare spoil it with milk!  

Sandy