A trip to Oman

[Kasia]

Dear TFF,

This year I have visited Oman, which is a nice and super hot country, with spectacular mountains and wadis. The first place that will be of interest to this forum was the Bimmah Sink Hole, which is said to have the underground connection via caves with the nearby sea.

 

 

There are hundreds of wadis all over the country –

 

 

 

and in the part of the country we visited, they are basically the only places with some greenery, as otherwise the country looks like this:

 

or like this:

 

 

The first place where one can spot fossils was the Al Hajar Mountains range and more precisely the Jebel Akhdar (the Green Mountain). It’s covered with huge stones with fossilised corals:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next beautiful place was Jebel Shams, which is also called the Grand Canyon of Oman:

 

 

 

 

We first browsed the rocks close to our camp on the top of the mountain

 

and one can find some fossilised rudists there.

 

The next day we went to the bottom of the canyon –

 

 

Of course you can drive the car only up to a certain point – and afterwards you need to walk. On the way we spotted several huge stones with fossils, and a few small ones, already very smooth because of the water.

 

 

 

In one of the villages we came across a few stalls where locals were selling fossils –

 

 

The next day we were supposed to visit the Al Hoota cave – I booked tickets online yet in July. As we were a bit ahead of schedule, our local guide called the cave to find out, if we can come a bit earlier than the booked time – and (surprise, surprise) he was told that the cave is closed for the reason of heavy rains in August. No one from the cave has bothered to mail me or text me with this info or to refund the cost of tickets to my account for more than a month – and it turned out the company operating the cave cannot transfer the money back to a foreign account – so we needed to go there anyway to get the refund in cash. There is always a silver lining – a cave has little geological museum before the entrance, so while they were processing the refund, I went to see it. Here are the specimens on display:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Further on we went to Wadi Bani Awf, where we stopped on the road to help a Spanish couple park their sedan somewhere safe (they ventured on this type of road with a small FWD Suzuki sedan and when they realised it’s completely out of question that they could continue, they tried to go back, but got stuck) and to call the police to come and tow them out

in the meantime I browsed the rocks on the side of the road - and they were full of such stuff - whatever this may be:

 

 

The wadi is beautiful

 

 

You can see the road we took

 

 

and it’s the place where the famous Snake Canyon is

 

 

Its name comes from its shape

 

 

We had some fun on the bottom of the wadi – and gave our car a little wash a few times

 

 

The last wadi we visited was Al-Khod

 

 

 

with Eocene and (I think Miocene) rocks, full of nummulites and foraminiferas.

 

I hope you enjoyed the report

 

[FossilDAWG]

Indeed I did.  Thank you! 

Don

[caterpillar]

Nice report. Thanks for sharing

[mr.cheese]

I enjoyed that, thank you

 

[RJB]

A great report with fantastic photo's. 

 

RB

[Shellseeker]

Taking us on a fossil hunt to a place I may never see. Thank you.

[Castle Rock]

BEAUTIFUL photos and a very interesting report!  THANK YOU!  Dave 

 

[jpc]

Oman!  How exotic.  Thanks for the tour and for taking us along. 

 

 

[Ludwigia]

Thanks for sharing. You sure do manage to visit some nice places.

[Kane]

Thanks for this! It is certainly a country many of us may never see in person, so it is nice to do a vicarious visit courtesy of your excellent and exciting report!

[Coco]

Great trip ! Thanks for sharing.

 

Coco