Salalah – Day 1

We stayed in a beach chalet at a new, beautiful Marriott resort about forty kilometers east of Salalah in the little town of Mirbat. Our villa was right on the Indian Ocean. It was a beautiful, peaceful location. Our family has come to the conclusion that we absolutely love the beach and all its tranquility. Ethan and Abby woke up early to comb the beach for seashells and play in the water.
Our first stop was up the mountainside to see what is purportedly Job’s tomb. Lebanon and Turkey also claim to have a tomb belonging to this great prophet of the Old Testament. A small building has been built over the grave and a mosque has been built next to the building. It was a quiet, reverent spot. We removed our shoes upon entering. You can see from the picture the space was small and mostly occupied by the neatly enshrouded grave. (I was so curious to know what exactly is underneath that green cloth and really wanted to lift it for a peek.) Other notables in the room were a pot of burning frankincense, some intricately engraved verses from the Quran, and a family tree illustrating the origins of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all stemming back to Abraham.

After visiting with some very nice German tourists we drove back down the mountain. Abigail had brought an apple with her which she had nearly finished. We told her she could give the remainder to a camel as we had seen many on our drive. We pulled off amongst a fair size caravan of camels. Dano took Abby and they ventured over to find the lucky one who'd get the tasty treat. The first one rejected it. He didn't know what he was missing. The next one smelled it and then to our collective delight, took it and ate it. I'm still not sure if he even chewed it.
He then posed while Dano took some pictures. He just couldn't decide which which was his best side.

We drove on to Ayn Razat. “Ayn” is Arabic for cave. It wasn’t a huge cave, as the kids were hoping for a spectacular hike, but it was fun, nonetheless and the scenery was nice.

This is the view from the cave.

We visited the site of a very large sinkhole, Tawi Atair. It measures 140 meters by 100 meters and is 211 meters deep. Since I am still familiarizing myself with measuring in meters, that’s the equivalent of a sixty-story building or better yet, imagine the Empire State Building plus another hundred feet. That’s deep! They don’t allow you get very close to the edge so it was hard to get a great shot of the immense depth of this monstrous hole.
The kids loved this towel puppy they found when we returned to our villa. We obviously had a very talented hotel maid and Abby’s puppy had a new friend. However, this required extra towels for our room for the week as no one could bring themselves to unfold the room mascot.