My dearest cavemen and cavewomen, this will be the first of many, I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time but only now I’ve finally decided I should remove my Neanderthal butt from the sofa and contribute for everyone’s happiness. First I would really love to once again thank everyone in ISCA and ACTE to provide me some of the best experiences of my life.
Starting from the top, and to be truly honest I would like to thank my dad for working where he works and for passing me the cave bug, to his friend Manuel Poças das Neves (Mapone) for helping to fuel it, my “third grandfather” Julião for all the lessons, my “forth grandfather” Doc. Clemente for keeping me focused on the job and specially my grandfather, my confident and best friend for always tagging along with my madness.
To both the Portuguese Speleological Society and the Portuguese Speleological Federation for their friendship and good advices.
Second to everyone at ACTE and specially to Rafael Pagés, Juan José Duran, Manuel Valsero and Ovidio Altable for inviting us to attend the Spanish congress a couple of years ago and opening us to the international cave associations.
To everyone at ISCA for their friendship, especially Isabel and Rod Graves, our sponsoring godfathers into the association, so in their honor I’d like to baptize my mascot as Lurh the Neanderthal as tribute for their Luray Caves.
My first true ISCA experience was during the 2015 meeting in Germany and Austria which I could only attend during the Austrian part, though further ahead I will do a post concerning that trip.
The idea for this blog came to me during the last ACTE congress in Nerja (Spain) so the first post had to be about it. After the congress came the 2016 ISCA meeting in Oman and I decided to do a journal about the entire trip instead of just one post with everything, unfortunately I only did it in Portuguese but you should also be able to see those in English, so I’ll make a quick résumé of the trip promising that future posts will have both the information in Portuguese an English.
So without further ado, this meeting started off on the 6th November 2016 after 8 hour flight to what seemed half way around the world to the sultanate of Oman, a friendly Muslim country located on the Arabian Peninsula that truthfully OI had never heard of until the 2015 meeting in Austria, imagine my surprise discovering that it was a Portuguese colony for 150 years.
The first day being boards meetings, we had most of the job done so we could enjoy the rest of our time there. The second day started with some presentations on the geography of Oman and their tourist potential. After lunch we left for Nizwa, where we visited the fort where Omani forces fought of the Portuguese invaders. After which we had a lovely dinner in a palm tree field.
On the third day we had the privilege to visit the amazing Al Hoota Cave, it has about 800 meters of visit able area and the tours take about 45 minutes. Tickets cost around 11,00€ per adult and the children pay around half that sum.
Don’t miss the amazing visitor’s center at Al Hoota Cave, very well conceived with lots of interesting information on the countries geology.
After lunch we went to see one of the caves natural entrances, a large wadi, which was dry at the time, but at times can carry a considerable amount of water. The wadi meaning water way, it can be a dry canyon, a calm river or raging water, this one in particular connects to three others each able to collect water from more than 50kms away. If the amount of water is too great, the cave must be evacuated for it will get completely flooded.
On this night dinner was in the courtyard of an Omani castle where our hosts explained the difference between a fort and a castle, in Omani culture, a fort always has a military connection and a castle is used has lodging for the sultan.
Leaving Nizwa’s region we headed south towards Wadi Bani Khalid where we found and amazing pool area around a great canyon, unfortunately we had no time to swim on this wadi and continued our trip further south towards the Wahiba sands a large desert area in the interior of the country where we first had lunch at a traditional bedouin tent, had a nice camel ride before rolling up the sand dunes, and experience one of the most spectacular experiences on earth, the desert sunset. That night we stayed at the 1000 night’s camp, 40kms desert in with the most surreal bathroom ever, with no ceiling taking a shower under the moonlight whilst feeing the cool desert breeze on your buttocks will surely be something to remember.
The following day another bucket list experience, the desert sunrise, absolutely amazing, worth every second of the bed waiting for it. Leaving the desert behind we headed for a paradise called Wadi Shaab, once again a vigorous hike on the canyon until reaching the pools of Wadi Shaab and as our host Khalid said, when entering the warm waters of the Wadi time stops and we enter a true fountain of youth. That night we had dinner at Raz Al Jinz Turtle Reserve where we had hoped to join a party at the beach to watch sea turtles lay their eggs, unfortunately it wasn’t possible for everyone’s sadness, but it’s just the way nature is, just wasn’t meant to be.
On the 11th November we headed towards Salma plateau to see the Al Jeela tombs which our hosts explained unlike their northern cousins these tombs weren’t used as tombs but rather then possible shelters or look outs during the Bronze Age. After which we travelled to Majlis Al Jinn, one of the world’s largest natural chambers with 181 meters deep, 340 meters long and 225 meter wide. It was a bumpy and dusty ride up the mountain to reach these two stops, and the only way to return would be through the same dusty and bumpy road until reaching the highway.
Reaching the highway we head for Hawiyat Najm Park and the Fallen Star Sinkhole, just about 600 meters from the ocean, the turquoise waters lay about 20 meters below the surface. The sinkhole is connected to the neighboring ocean and a staircase leads to the water level where one can have a nice bath. Some of the ledges of the sinkhole are used for acrobatic dives from some of the locals, but only the bravest dare the vertiginous 20 meters dive from the higher edge. As time was running late we decided to skip the last stop and instead enjoy some time at the beach in Fins. This was my second oceanic experience of the year after I first had a refreshing January bath in the Atlantic ocean during a festival in the Island of Madeira, Portugal’s own Hawaii, we had a bath in the warm waters of the Indic during November for the envy of those that didn’t make the meeting and friends and relatives back home.
That night we had the nice surprise of being able to give our caveman friend Hadi a nice birthday surprise with cake and all.
On our last day, we took most of the morning traveling to the capital Muscat where we enjoyed a refreshing and nice lunch followed by a tour to the national museum where once again I was delighted to see further documents of the Portuguese presence there.
We had a nice sunset tour on a double-decker bus around the harbor before finally stopping for a dhow cruise on the harbor before having dinner on board. Once again through the words of our president Brad we gave thanks to our host for the wonderful experience they gave us and when we though there weren’t going to be any more surprises our hosts presented us with the traditional Omani daggers and might I say, my fireplace never looked so good.
So please follow me on my facebook page as well, I’ll be posting all the photos there as well.
