.

Sohar so good
We don’t know what the locals would have been thinking. While dozens of young Omani boys were on the beach playing soccer at a frenetic pace, two nearby New Zealand tourists had discovered and were carefully photographing a giant sea turtle rolling in the surf. Although well known that turtles are slow, this one seemed extraordinarily passive, its movement consistent with the rippling waves rather than its own propulsion. In fact, it had as much life as John Cleese’s parrot. It was enough to drive the tourists back to the poolside bar of the Sohar Beach Hotel and reconsider their careers as still-life photographers.
More unusual, when we got up the next morning, the tide was in and with it a carpet of dead fish. Literally tens of thousands of small herring-like corpses as far as the eye could see along the shoreline. No-one could explain the reason, other than it was uncommon, perhaps the result of an explosion at a nearby construction. Who knows?
“Sohar so good”, the logo on the hotel’s complimentary box of matches read. We left Abu Dhabi late, then got lost finding the crossing into Oman at Al Ain, the Western border of the Emirates. There was no way we were going to reach Muscat by nightfall, so we decided to stop en-route at Sohar, the town where Sinbad the sailor was born. It has just three hotels, all of which charge a fortune. That is a common theme in the newly developing parts of Arabia. Because there has been little tourism, the new hotels are all capital-intensive ultra-luxury resorts, the older ones able then to price themselves a margin lower but still very expensive. There appears to be no back-packer or similar type accommodation. Thus it was that it cost a little under $NZ500 for a room with two small single beds and fraying towels, although breakfast was part of the package. We made sure that we stayed poolside next morning until the very last moment before checking out at noon.
The drive to get from Al Ain to Sohar is through mountains of rock, volcanic in look, ranging from scoria-like to sulpherish colours. It is huge country, giving a similar impression of vastness as when driving through the Southern Alps in New Zealand, only it is more barren and the mountains more craggy and inhospitable. There is almost no vegetation save for date palms around small villages, and the occasional fort lookout. The roads are excellent, the benefit of oil money and apparently lots of assistance from the Emirates looking to build Oman as a side-destination for UAE tourism. Neither would the roads be so good without the hundreds of migrant workers who toil away in the hot desert sun.