Had a business trip to Oman this week and decided to go a day earlier in order to squeeze in a dive or two.
I booked into the Al Sawadi Beach Resort Hotel, which is sadly still a tired old place and overpriced but convenient for using the dive shop / resort next door, now run by Extra Divers
The drive down from Dubai was okay until I reached Sohar, lots of road works from there on, and in fact the turn off for Al Sawadi now requires doing a U-turn and coming back up the road again, fortunately I had the coordinates in my GPS otherwise I would have missed it completely in the dark.
The hotel is not much to rave about and I guess about 75% + of the clientele are German. Bar service is incredibly slow in the restaurant.
Extra Divers have really changed things around from the previous organization that ran the dive shop, perhaps some teutonic efficiency is what was really needed, there is much better wash area and drying shed totally covered plus lockers to put personal gear in.
The day before I arrived they had to cancel the dive due to bad weather, so I changed over from my planned wide angle to macro, actually the visibility at the dive sites we visited was not too bad 5-10m excellent in my opinion since my last dives off UAE were in 2M of murk.
45 min boat ride out to the Damaniyat Islands is on a nice spacious boat with a real mix of people, apart from myself, two Frenchies and a Spaniard, the other five divers were German. A second boat was also leaving about 30 minutes after the first one that I was on.
Dive time was set to 50 bar or 60 mins, which is fine by me.
One of the DMs on the boat took a look at my gear + camera + pony and asked me if I wanted to dive with anyone, I said I would tag along but not to worry if you don't see me until after the dive, it all worked well and I had two pretty good solo dives.
No much to eat during the SI though, few oranges and tea with sugar in it and a couple of biscuits. Very little water on board.
Damaniyat Islands probably have the best diving in this region, with frequent Whale Shark sightings during the season, but not during the winter.
Price for two dives with all of my own equipment was OMR33 (USD85.44)
Found one of the most colourful scorpionfish I had seen for a long time
Not many nudibranchs though at the two sites I dived, this Phidiana indica was spotted at "Garden of Eden" dive site
Hopefully I will be back down there again in a couple of months time and plan to dive with them again.
I booked into the Al Sawadi Beach Resort Hotel, which is sadly still a tired old place and overpriced but convenient for using the dive shop / resort next door, now run by Extra Divers
The drive down from Dubai was okay until I reached Sohar, lots of road works from there on, and in fact the turn off for Al Sawadi now requires doing a U-turn and coming back up the road again, fortunately I had the coordinates in my GPS otherwise I would have missed it completely in the dark.
The hotel is not much to rave about and I guess about 75% + of the clientele are German. Bar service is incredibly slow in the restaurant.
Extra Divers have really changed things around from the previous organization that ran the dive shop, perhaps some teutonic efficiency is what was really needed, there is much better wash area and drying shed totally covered plus lockers to put personal gear in.
The day before I arrived they had to cancel the dive due to bad weather, so I changed over from my planned wide angle to macro, actually the visibility at the dive sites we visited was not too bad 5-10m excellent in my opinion since my last dives off UAE were in 2M of murk.
45 min boat ride out to the Damaniyat Islands is on a nice spacious boat with a real mix of people, apart from myself, two Frenchies and a Spaniard, the other five divers were German. A second boat was also leaving about 30 minutes after the first one that I was on.
Dive time was set to 50 bar or 60 mins, which is fine by me.
One of the DMs on the boat took a look at my gear + camera + pony and asked me if I wanted to dive with anyone, I said I would tag along but not to worry if you don't see me until after the dive, it all worked well and I had two pretty good solo dives.
No much to eat during the SI though, few oranges and tea with sugar in it and a couple of biscuits. Very little water on board.
Damaniyat Islands probably have the best diving in this region, with frequent Whale Shark sightings during the season, but not during the winter.
Price for two dives with all of my own equipment was OMR33 (USD85.44)
Found one of the most colourful scorpionfish I had seen for a long time
Not many nudibranchs though at the two sites I dived, this Phidiana indica was spotted at "Garden of Eden" dive site
Hopefully I will be back down there again in a couple of months time and plan to dive with them again.
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