After breakfast, we had just enough time to drive back to Salalah’s Frankincense Souq to purchase another kilo of the venerable sap.
After checking on-line and discovering that 25 g of the stuff costs half as much back home as a 1 kg bag over here, it was clear that it would be foolish to find ourselves buying more of it in the near future in The Netherlands. So instead, we added another kilo of weight to our luggage.
After purchasing a couple of small bananas at a fruit stand, we filled up with petrol and drove to the airport. There, we dropped off our hire car and checked in for our flight.
The flight was another pleasant one, although Eloïse was restless and fidgeting a lot. Sarah was soaked by the end of the flight, as Eloïse spills a lot of water as she drinks from cups and bottles. Fortunately, it’s so hot that it doesn’t really matter; it dries again so quickly.
Back in Muscat, we retrieved our original hire car from the car park (three days of parking just a two minute walk from the terminal cost just OMR 3.100 [± €6]) and drove to the Amouage Perfumery for a tour of the place.
I thought this would be a bit like a brewery tour, but with perfume in the vats instead of beer. It turned out to be nothing like that, however; it was more of a potted history of the brand, followed by summaries of the individual perfumes, complete with main ingredients, launch years, etc.
The most interesting part was when we were taken behind the scenes to see how the perfume is bottled. Muslim ladies were busy manually putting bottles in boxes, boxes in cellophane, and sticker seals on the cellophane. I was thus surprised to discover that every single stage of the process is performed by hand, even the packaging of tiny samplers.
Amouage is set to release a new perfume, Reflections, at Easter (earlier in Oman). It was hard to resist purchasing a pre-release bottle of the potion, so we bought a bottle of the men’s variant, along with a bottle of a different scent for Sarah).
That was all we had time for today. After that, we drove across the sprawl that is Muscat to reach our hotel, where we checked in and dropped our stuff in our room.
Dinner was at an excellent Mexican restaurant called Pavo Real. The waiters, mostly Indian, were dressed as Mexicans, complete with bandana, gun belts and tassled waistcoats. I was reminded of the Thai men we saw in Chiang Mai, back in 2002, wearing complete Bavarian regalia, including lederhosen, at a German restaurant.
Thankfully, what could have been a kitsch disaster was actually kitchen bliss, as the chef turned out to be a real Mexican! The food was therefore surprisingly excellent. There was even a live band, playing cheesy pop covers.
Tomorrow, we check out and head back west to a city split across the border between Oman and the UAE. On the Omani side, it’s called Buraimi. On the Emirati side, it’s known as Al Ain. We’ll be staying on the Emirati side.
That doesn’t mean we’re finished with Oman, however. If all goes according to plan, we’ll reenter Oman in the form of the geographically isolated Musandam peninsula in just a few days’ time. This peninsula is physically separated from the rest of Oman by UAE territory and is supposed to have a character all its own. Hopefully, we’ll see.