From Ash Shuwaymiyah to Duqm, the route was quite boring, taking us through endless plains with not much to see. Later, we were closer to the coast again but the landscape was mostly monotonous.
For the night, we found a lovely spot at the lagoon of Wadi Tarif. Like all this lagoons, many birds were around and beside of many Grey Herons and Flamingos, we spotted also Eurasian Spoonbills, Great Cormorants and Pallas’s Gulls. It was a short walk to the beach, but there were many plastic bottles spoiling it a little.
The next day, we continued to Duqm, where we stopped first to refill with fresh water, then restocked at the supermarket and finally reached the Rock Garden, an area with fascinating rock formations close to town, where we even spotted a fox, the second one we saw in Oman!
Duqm is a town being built up from nothing with a a huge harbour under construction, one of the largest refineries already finalised and many new apartment buildings and even hotels. Roads lined with trees and roundabouts are already constructed, but at the moment, everything still looks like a big construction site.
We continued our way north, but soon took a turn onto a graded road leading to the coast and the Sugar Dunes, white sand dunes behind the beach. The track was good and when we reached the dunes, we decided to camp along the endless beach.
The Sugar Dunes were quite a distance from the coast and the track we were using. We didn’t try and sink our ship in the deep sand by driving into the dunes, instead we admired them from afar.
During the night, the wind picked up and was rattling at our car, but didn’t bother us. The next morning the wind hadn’t stopped and you had the feeling of getting sand-blasted so we left rather soon. The way back to the main road was much more difficult, as there was so much sand in the air, that the visibility was low. Everything was white, the road, the surroundings, the air.
When we finally reached the tar road again, we continued to Shanna Port, from where we want to take the ferry to Masirah Island.