Hello,
We are a group of 4 (2 man, 2 women) that went to UAE (4 days), Yemen (9days) and Oman (days). We traveled from May 10th until June 2nd. Here is the trip report for the Oman portion. Please see other forums for the others countries report.
We hired a Landcruiser and went directly to Nizwa to have a good night sleep as we had an overnight in Duabi airport on our way from Sana'a. Before going to bed early, we visited Nizwa fort. We slept at Maja guesthouse, it was clean and reasonably priced for Oman standard. (all hotel in Oman have excessive price.) The next day, we drove to the rim of Jebel sham. All way up there are spectacular landscape, and at the rim, standing at the edge of a one kilometer cliff, it's quite something amazing and scary at the same time. We then headed our way toward Masirah island and stopped at Mahout Guesthouse since it was late. Huge mistake, the room had BEDBUGS in it, luckily, we saw them before getting set-up so we left for the next hotel, Al-Jazeera tourist guesthouse, we didn't see any bedbugs, but it was so dirty, we didn't want to check for it, so we finally ended up camping in the desert nearby.
The next morning, we drove toward the ferry to Masirah island, on our way, we had a look at the salt flat, which is always interesting to see such a scenery. We spent the entire day driving along the island and stopping anywhere we wanted too. One tip you should follow, as soon as you arrived on the island, head for Masirah Resort, and ask them a map of the island. We went the other way around, so we roam the island without any tourist map, so we missed a couple of nice spot. But, the reason we went to this island was to see turtles nesting, so after the resort recommandations, we had dinner there(very good food) and after dinner, we went right on the resort beach for turtle spotting. We were lucky enough to see a huge loggerhead turtle digging a hole, laying eggs (it was hidden by her body), and covering her hole, then head back to the see. And, we were alone on the beach to witness this nature beauty. We then pitch our tent on the beach not so far from the hotel, to realized another turtle was nesting right beside our tent. This time, we could saw her eggs falling into the hole. And the cherry on the cake, on the next morning, in full daylight, another turtle came right where we were swimming. She walked a little bit on the beach, but finally returned in the ocean.
So we returned on the Mainland, and drove toward the village of Fins near Wadi Shab to find a spot to camp. We drove through the Sharqya highway that goes in the desert but stay near the sea. We did try to go a bit in the desert dunes, but got stuck in 2 minutes. Luckily, we were still not far from the highway, so 8 persons stopped and we all pushed the car to finally get back on the highway after 30 minutes of pushing...scary but funny after knowing we didn't break the car. We finally pitch our tent nearby by a cliff by the seaside near the village of Fins.
The next day, we visited Wadi Tiwi, Wadi Shab and the sinkhole. It was a perfect day, everything was different and beautiful in it's own way. We then drove to Tiwi, to pitch our tent on the sandy beach out there, it was a perfect spot to pitch our tent... We saw hatched turtles eggs right by her tent, but didn't see the babies...
The last 2 days, we decided to spoiled ourselves since we did a lot of camping throughout the trip and we went to the Shangi-La resort and spa. It was relaxing and the facilities were great. We were Lucky enough to have find a 2 for 1 coupon so the price was reasonnable. Before checking in the first day, we spent the entire morning with a local fisherman, and we did some snorkelling to catch cuddlefish (it's between an octopus and calamari looking.) and we cooked them right on a desert beach. It was really nice and the landscape of the blue water and the cliif/rocks were awesome.
We spent our last afternoon in old muscat and at the muscat souk. We didn't go to the grand mosquee as we believed we'd seen enough, but it looked nice from the highway...
Oman was a nice country to visit, with different scenery around the countries. Most of the people we met were nice and authentic. We didn't go across lot of tourist except in the wadis. Hotel were expensive, but food was cheap, and most of the activities, free or cheap. A good place to get lunches or camping food, is the Lulu hypermarket, sad to say, but made me think of a Walmart supercentre, but we could find anything we want for a small price.
Hope you enjoy Oman as we did.
