Thursday 5 May

28-38C

Cloud cover

Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot!!!!!We had a tour around Muscat this morning which started at 9am and already it was way too hot.We started the tour with a visit to the Grand Mosque which is fairly new being built only 10 years ago and taking 3 years to build.We had to cover our head, arms and legs which was the pits 'cause it was so hot.It was unbearable and made the visit less exciting 'cause all l wanted to do was to get back onto the air conditioned car.We went into the mosque and found it to be very ornate.It holds more than 15,000 worshippers and it's in the Guinness book of records for having the largest carpet in the world.As soon as we got back into the car we stripped everything off before continuing onto the natural museum of Oman which shows a diversity of the local flora & fauna, shells, fossils and insects and was just okay but l felt the Omani heritage museum would have been much more interesting.From there we went to a beach where after I put my hand in the water and felt it was warm l picked up a couple of sea shells... I'm gonna try to get them through customs and then we headed to the fish market, eeow!It stank of fish!We didn't stay there very long, uuugh.Our next stop was the Muttrah Souk where we bought a couple of souvenirs.The shopkeepers were trying their hardest to sell us their wares and it was fun bargaining with them, it was also very colorful with the scarves, belly dancing outfits, caftans, silks and materials.Outside the souk we saw an electronic temperature board that indicated it was 45C but the taxi driver reckoned it was wrong….l wouldn't bet on it though!After the souk we went to the walled city of Old Muscat to see the Al Alam Palace which is flanked by the 16th century Portuguese forts - Mirani & Jilani.Not quite the type of palaces we're used to seeing as it had lots of mosaics on the main entrance and it was flat roofed and had domes on it.Pretty big though.The driver took us to the Intercontinental hotel to have a look at the lobby which l thought was pretty strange but he seemed almost proud to show it off.Eh…it was just a lobby but there was a guy in there who was in national dress and had a knife in a sheaf tied around his waist so we took his picture.Also there was a television crew shooting a commercial so l took a picture of the actress because she was dressed in Bollywood style costume.Then we went to another beach which looked pretty nice…the water was calm and there were motor boats for hire. On the way back to the hotel l mentioned to the driver that l hadn't seen a camel yet and the next thing we knew we were picking up his boss and heading off the Royal Oman Police Mounted Division to see if they'd let us in to have a look at the camels (they have them in a compound for training purposes).Anyway, after a bit of sweet talking they let us in and drove us to where the camels were.There were heaps of them and there were even two little baby ones…they were about 2 months old and so cute.The driver and his boss said we were very privileged to have been allowed in to see the camels so we felt rather special.After shaking the policeman's hand and thanking him we were taken back to our hotel.It was about 2.30 by this time and we were starving so we had a bite to eat and just relaxed for the afternoon.Tonight we'll go to bed fairly early as we have to get up at 2am to get to the airport by 3 to catch the plane to Dubai at 5.The flight is only one hour.We fly out of Dubai and head for home (yaaaay) at 10am and land at Tullamarine at 5am on Saturday.Wow…..it's been a helluva trip and one l've both enjoyed and at times disliked.We met some very lovely people along the way who have left us with lots of wonderful memories.