It has been a long and busy week. The Albers – Fulton clan descended on Nizwa for a four day trip and we went to several places we had never been and got lost a lot (mostly thanks to me), but in the end we saw a lot of cool stuff and had a cool time.
here are some images:
1.
this is in a valley at the top of mount akhdar. I do not know much about the mount yet, but will be updating you as it is very close to our school and therefore we will definitely be returning. To go up the mountain you MUST have a 4wd. There is a police checkpoint to make sure you do have one. If you do not you can park and climb, but I would guess it would take weeks to ascend. The scope and size of the place are impossible, but to give you a feel, this image shows how some crops and the like are grown in the valleys in one small region of the mountain.
2.
here, sun and the clan prepare to head off to the ruins in the background. Again, we have no idea how old or the history of this area as we just happened by it. there are thousands of such settlements all over Oman.
3.
taken looking out from the ruins in picture one, here you can see another set of ruins off in the distance.
One of the coolest things that happened here was we bought pomegranates. Jabel (mountain) Al Akhdar is famous for its pomegranates, which ripen in September to early October. Yes we caught them perfectly in season. We were driving around looking fro some and were about to leave when we saw a bunch of Omani ladies carrying bags filled with them. We went to them and asked where we could get some, and then noticed that their bags were not filled with pomegranates at all but with sweets and drinks. Anyways, we were right in front of this woman’s house and we used the only Arabic we know (Hello…5? Pomegranate?) and she came back and gave us 10 pomegranates for 5 rial. Sweet. The coolest part of this is that in Arabic pomegranate is “Roman” which Sundi learned from Shamsa, a woman works in the office at school. Good work Sun!!!
2 comments:
We showed pix of oman and "danny" to grandma iea...she keeps bragging that she is the ONLY one of us that can call you danny since she's old enough to have earned it.
Robyn here. Great pictures. The pomegranates were indeed a highlight, as was the banana village. So good of you to show us around. You didn't give yourself enough credit for the pomegranate experience. Without your asking the fruit-man for directions, we would have been down the mountain instead of hiking to the village. By the way, the film festival is from October 10th to 17th here. Come on down/or up...I am not sure what direction we are.
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