Sailing to Salalah, Oman

Saturday, April 12

Another day at sea, another relaxing day! We started our day with a leisurely breakfast in our cabin as our first "appointment" was not until 11 am when we went to the Show Room to hear Dr Helena Aves, an American geologist speak about unconventional sources of energy, shale gas and oil sands, and their controversial methods of extraction such as fracking. It was very informative but also very confronting and left many of us considering our shareholdings in companies associated with these practices.

From there we went poolside to watch a very entertaining belly dance performance and from tomorrow we can take belly dancing lessons - not a pretty thought! From what we have seen sun baking around the pool this could be either very amusing or absolutely revolting!

Tomorrow we have a day in Salalah so took the opportunity to go and listen to our Location Guide's talk about the port and all the things there are to do there. We decided to haggle with a local taxi driver to take ourselves and Canadian friends to the places we want to see rather than take a ship's excursion as this has worked really well for us to date.

After all this "work" it was time for a snooze in the sun before our daily constitutional of 4 laps of the ship's promenade. It is comforting to see that we are being escorted (at a distance) by at least one warship and the Captain assures us that there are others close by because we are now in dangerous waters until we exit the Suez on April 21. All the hoses around the decks are now filled with water and security staff numbers have visibly increased - which we are very glad about.

After a lovely dinner in the main restaurant with our Canadian friends, we returned to the Show Room to hear a German flautist, Bettine Clemen. Her performance was fantastic and was accompanied by video of her playing to animals all around the world - inquisitive little penguins in Chile, an enormous sea turtle in St Helena, Aussie animals in Oz, pandas on The Great Wall and then to little children around the globe - all equally moved by her music. It was a lovely end to a lovely day.

 

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