Around Muscat and Al-Batinah region - "Goodbye Oman, we'll miss you"

We visited enough forts and wadis (valleys) for them to become our lasting image of Oman.
Other lasting memories will be:
- men dressing in white and women in black. Another example of how men got the better end of the deal: they go about in their light long dresses called 'dishdashas', while women are wrapped around layers of black, in most cases including a veil that only leaves the face uncovered. In the heat of the summer, it looks overwhelming
- notably, everybody smells good. Maybe it is that little rope hanging from the dishdasha's collar that they soak in perfume
- lots of immigrant workers, especially Indian and Filipino, everywhere
- most cars are white; camouflage vehicles are sandy beige (without much vegetation around, they need the color of sand, instead of green and brown)
- Muscat is an extremely clean city
- everybody drives around. With the heat, very few people find a reason to leave the a/c in their cars. It is like the US, in a way, lots of large SUVs. Petrol is cheap, at USD0.30 per liter.
- everybody loves His Majesty, Sultan Qaboos
- and most of all, we'll remember the Omanis' hospitality and generosity. We didn't find anybody being rude to us, everybody tried to help, everybody smiled. So nice.

We are waiting for our flight to Dubai. Technically, I have a visa, but it seems to be quite hard to enter the UAE with an Argentinean passport. Anything can happen. We'll see.
Mercedes