Salalah is on the south coast of Oman on the Arabian Sea, about thirty miles from Yemen. It is on a flat coastal plain with the Dhofar Mountains not far away. The area is spectacularly fertile, with date palms, tropical fruit trees and many crops. There are lots of white sand beaches that in other places would be covered with five star resorts, but near Salalah are curiously deserted. We saw a stretch of about ten kilometers of beautiful sand beach with only some camels and a few fishermen on it. Our guide said that there would be people on it on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (their weekend), but usually during the week no one goes to the beach much. For one thing, that part of Oman is very traditional and conservative, so bathing suits would have to cover the entire body (no Speedos). Our tour started with a drive to Mughsayl Beach. Mughsayl Beach has some world-famous blowholes, but unfortunately, they only operate at high tide and we were there at low tide, so no action. However, the Dhofar A come down quite close to the beach and they are spectacular. Coming around the path to Marbeef Cave is a moment that takes your breath away from sheer surprise at the magnificence of the view. Great picture opportunity, except that the sweep of the landscape is really too vast for a single picture. I will try to upload a panorama, but I think for the most part you just have to be there.

After taking our pictures at the beach and cave, we got back into the bus to go to Job's Tomb. While we were going there, the guide began talking about the culture and geography of the area. He explained that there are many different tribes in Oman and they all have certain areas that 'belong’ to them because they have lived there for centuries, even while they were nomadic (which some still are). He said that although they are mostly Moslems, some tribes have a slightly different take on things than others, so there is a sort of cultural crazy quilt and you kind of need to know where you are and who you are dealing with to know the rules. We stopped along the way to visit a grove of frankincense trees, and got a lot of information about frankincense. For instance, there are different colors of frankincense; they come from different collections of the sap of the tree. When the tree is first pierced to collect the sap, it runs nearly clear or white. Later piercings in the same spot produce progressively darker sap, until it is a dark golden color, almost brown. He showed us on the trees how the different colors of sap come from the same tree, and answered our questions about how the trees grow and are cared for.    Then we got back on the bus and he began to tell us the saga of his life (to be fair, it started because one of us asked him about marriage customs). Turns out he was a widower and felt like he wanted to marry again, but it is really hard to meet women, since dating is not legal in Oman – a woman can only go about in public with her husband or a blood relative, like a father or brother. So a friend told him about an Internet site for Moslems who want to get married. He registered for the site and made contact with a likely sounding woman. Turns out she was a Russian from Uzbekistan and didn’t speak any Arabic. He told the entire story like some romantic saga, which I guess it was. He said after about a week or two of the two of them chatting on the site, he asked her to marry him. She said she hadn’t thought about marriage yet, and they had only known each other a short time. He told her she was on a site for women who want to get married, so the only question was did she want to marry him? He told about going to Uzbekistan to meet her and her daughter (she was a widow), and the difficulties of getting permission to marry her. He said it was only because he was over fifty that he was allowed to marry a non-Omani woman (they figured he had already tried Omani women and gotten turned down). It sounded like there is an official policy to make sure every Omani woman who wants a husband can get one.

Of course, one of the main points of the trip was Job’s Tomb. David had heard several stories about it, and done some research. One traveler’s blog he read said the traveler had been amazed at the size of the coffin/sarcophagus and asked why it was so big. He was told it was because there were two people buried there. His wife was told that there was only one person, but that people were bigger in those days. So David wanted me to ask our guide why the tomb is so big. However, after the guide told us about the American drilling company that found remains of people thirty feet tall in the Arabian desert I decided I could not trust any story he told without independent verification. Besides, it was obvious his position is that people were bigger in those days.

Another thing the guide told us is that Oman has more camels than anywhere. That certainly seemed to be true. There were camels, both wild and tame, everywhere! At the end of the tour we went shopping in a market and I bought frankincense and myrrh for the grandchildren at Christmas, so they could see what the gifts the Wise Men brought were really like.