25.11. Baobab forest, Jabal Samhan

Check out is at 1 p.m., so we still use the morning to dry the car and carefully repack before the next trip. We are going to the mountains to the viewpoint of Jabal Samhan.

The "Gravity point", sought after by tourists, awaits us on the way, where, thanks to an optical illusion, it is supposed to look like the cars are driving themselves up the hill. We stand there for a while at the sign, wondering which way the miracle is supposed to be, when an Omani carrying tourists stops, stops the car, turns off the engine and shows us that the car is now turned off and it's going wow! up the hill. This performance is the best part of the whole thing, because Lenka looks at it and says what we all think: "But it's downhill there, it's right". You probably shouldn't get out of the car for this parade, otherwise the perspective is different.

We continue along the switchbacks to the Baobab forest and don't expect much from it. We stop right at the parking lot on the main road, we passed the turnoff. The children do protest a bit, it's quite hot, but it's really only a few hundred meters and there are beautiful baobabs around the turn, so it's worth the walk. From the second parking lot, we continue through the forest along the path, there are more baobabs and the path ends at one huge one. The forest is very pleasant, there are also other types of deciduous trees and again lizards. Then we take a short walk to the stream, but swimming is prohibited, we don't know if it's because of Schistosomiasis, but we don't risk it.

It's getting close to early evening, but we can't resist going up to the top of the mountains, so we head up the hill to the viewpoint of Jabal Samhan. At the top is a wide plateau, on the edge of which the rocks drop steeply into the valley. At Karheef there are usually views above the clouds, today we can see all the way to the sea, but the valley is slightly foggy. But there is a nice scenic route built here, and apart from one Omani family, we are alone here.

David and I stayed at the lookout and I saw some movement in the distance, something was running and there was more. David talked me into going to see it. So we walked along the footpath under the rock and actually managed to see and photograph the animals, which we later identified as Rock Damans. We saw several and David even got very close to one. They had burrows in rock overhangs. We returned to the parking lot just as the sun was setting.

Since it is clear that we will be looking for a place to sleep in the dark, we decided to drive up to an hour away to a scenic beach (no one took my suggestion that we sleep in the mountains instead of on the beach, as it is quite cool here) . The beach is really beautiful, with rocks and surrounding mountains, but it was very windy, in the end we decided that our tents would hold up and we pitched our tents partially leeward of the rock rock and the car. At least we used the outdoor showers near the nearby waterworks. The children fell asleep in no time, I was woken up in the middle of the night by the wind blowing the tent and also by the light of the approaching full moon.