From Shannah, we took the ferry to get to the island of Masirah, which lies about 15 km from the mainland. The desert island has lovely sand beaches, which are great for snorkelling, something we were looking forward to.
There is the national ferry which we thought we would take, just that they were not running because of the wind. In their office, they recommended us to take one of the local ferry boats, which we did. The loading was just slightly chaotic and we especially enjoyed the passenger in front of us, munching on his greens.
The calm ride took 1h 40 minutes and we paid 36.700 Rial (88 Euros) which was a ripp-off, because on the way back it was only 26 Rial. Arriving on the island, we drove south, taking the first beach, which was on IOverlander. The sandstorm was still obscuring the view but the wind calmed down over night and the next day, we had blue skies again and everything looked much brighter.
On many beaches, we saw traces of turtles coming to the beach during the night to lay their eggs. We noticed locals checking the beaches for that in the morning and we heard that they dig the eggs out of the sand as food.
We tried many beaches on the island, especially in the south. Our favourite spot was a lovely beach the south west: 20.20592, 58.63099 The broken of bits of corals promised some interesting snorkelling, the water was calm, crystal clear and the beach (nearly) clean of plastic – a lovely spot!
We had a good time at Masirah, especially the snorkelling was great. We will now return to the mainland and continue north.
schade dass die Omanis es auch nicht verstanden haben, die Schildkröten zu schützen und dadurch mehr Einnahmen zu haben als die Eier zu essen.
Gute Weiterreise unddanke für die Eindrücke