Oh Sweet Salalah - Part One

This past weekend, I flew to Salalah with a few of my classmates. I am so grateful for this trip - it has been my most positive experience in Oman, and I really enjoyed myself. Salalah is a city grown from a trading port on the Indian Ocean, and served as a central point of trade between India, East Africa, and the Middle East. All the Omanis we had talked to told us at the beginning of the program, "After one month, Salalah will be so beautiful!" So we booked our tickets. Then when we shared our dates, they all said, "Now, Salalah is not beautiful...after one month, it will be beautiful!" The sense of time is clearly different here...undeterred, we went anyway.
After we arrived, we picked up our rental car and drove north to Wadi Dawkah, where there is a UNESCO-sponsored reserve. The reserve protects a grove of frankincense trees. Both frankincense and myrrh are found in abundance in Oman (you may recognize these as two of the three gifts the wise men brought baby Jesus). Frankincense is collected by hashing the trunk of the tree and allowing the resin to form (2-3 weeks). These drops are collected and burned as incense. The Arabic name for it is ألبان (luban). The trees are quite beautiful close up.

On our way back south to Salalah, we ran into some early afternoon traffic on the roads...

but we made it to Ayn al-Sahlanout. People aren't allowed to swim in the water, because snails infected with bilharzia have contaminated the water. But it is an incredibly beautiful spot, to view from afar.

The water had also carved away the rock in intricate and delicate formations.

Afterwards, we drove into the town of Salalah. Banana, palm, and coconut groves line the streets of the town and run up to the coast. It's lush and green, and fruit stalls with local fruit are quite the temptation.

We availed ourselves of fresh bananas and coconuts, although it was hard to pass up the mangoes. The fruit seller was very sweet, and when I asked him what a particular fruit was, he broke it open so we could try it. It's called chikku, and looked like the below. It was really sweet, like mangosteen, and quite delicious.

At lunch, we found (after several wrong turns and asking a local), the restaurant our professor recommended, Maestro Cafe. It was really delicious - but we didn't order the Mexican feather thieves. We'll have to go back and try it sometime.

After a much-needed nap, we had dinner at a Persian restaurant and then went and sat by the beach. It was gorgeous, 75 degrees, and so incredibly peaceful.