We all woke up early today as we had to be at Marina Bandar Al Rowdha by around 8am. First up, it was breakfast at the Radisson Blu hotel.
This was just the breads section. Also had fresh pistachios, almonds, cashews, walnuts and a variety of bread spreads.The cold meats and fruits counter. On the other side, there were other traditional breakfast dishes, puri-bhaji, omlette counter, corn flakes and a whole variety of hot & cold drinks on offer. All in all, a huge breakfast buffet!I started off with some croissants. Too bad we didn’t have enough time to sample everything in the buffet.After breakfast, we were picked up by our driver.We were on our way to Muscat City againThe marina looked lovely early in the morningI missed roundabouts of the Gulf 🙂We stopped at a petrol station to fill up and pick up some water bottles. Being in a GCC country, I just had to take a photo of how much petrol costs out here. Regular costs 0.114 riyals, which is Rs. 18 ($0.30/€0.25) per litre!It was a fairly long drive to Marina Bandar Al Rowdha
I was impressed at how well-manicured the lawns along the highways wereWe reached Marina Bandar Al Rowdha and were assigned a boatThis was our boatThe boat was full of mostly Indian touristsTook some photos using the GoProLet the cruising begin!It wasn’t long before the boat slowed down because we spotted what seemed to be dolphinsWe were told the type of dolphins that frequent these waters were Bottlenose dolphins, common dolphins, and Spinner dolphinsThe dolphins were starting to appear much closer to usThis boatman seemed to be drawing a line through the waters and dolphins were chasing him. Feed for the dolphins?There were dolphins all around!The other sideI had to swap lenses for better zoomThey were all around usPft, attention seeker!This photograph isn’t black and white… it just turned out that wayIt was still early in the morning
We spotted quite a few spinnersThere were at least 4 or 5 tour boats alongside oursIt was pretty awesome to see a pod of dolphins (yes, a group of dolphins is called a ‘pod,’ I had to check)Don’t ask me what species they wereMuscat marina in the distanceNot sharksWe could see major ships now
Risso dolphins?You have a second to try and capture them the moment they jump out of the water
We spent nearly and hour spotting dolphins, and there wasn’t a singly long gap we waited to spot then. Right from the time we saw the first dolphin, it was a constant “oh, look there!” “hey, there are more on this side” and “wow, so many!”. We saw a lot of a dolphins, and it was a great experience.
The landmark Incense burner monument of MuscatWe had seen enough dolphins for today, so the boat turned around and next we were going towards some rock formationsOn the way, we saw Al Alam PalaceAnd saw some other attractions along the wayForgot the name of this fortThen the boat sped up and we were all in awe of the sceneryA human head-shaped rockAnd how appropriate is this? A dolphin-shaped rock 🙂Elephant rockThe water looked amazing!Seemed like a good spot to fish tooA seaside cemeteryOman truly has a beautiful coastlineWe slowed down as we neared a fishing villageWe didn’t have an English-speaking guide with us, so I could only remember little of what we were told about this place… which wasn’t muchAnother rock formation in the shape of an animal. Can you guess which animal?With our tour over, we returned to the marinaLuxury toys for the richDhow, a traditional Arabian boatWe took a group selfie before leaving the docksOffices for various tour companies and public restrooms are in this building
We found out that the dolphin watching tour usually costs OMR 15 (Rs.2400/$38/€34) — and that’s for the 2-3 hours spent at sea spotting dolphins and other seaside attractions. But as it turns out, we were the lucky ones! We met another Indian group who told us they hardly saw any dolphins! Which was weird because they started at around the same time as us and I assumed, all the boats that were following us surely must have seen as many dolphins as we saw. Turns out, we were really fortunate.
Here’s a small video I took of the dolphins while we were out at sea:
Our tours for day wasn’t over though. The driver then took us high above to some viewpoints before lunch, but all that in the next post.
ameen
17/12/2015Great Photos dolphin watching and amazing Muscat coastline.