Sunday, June 1, 2008

Kasab Diving

For Carls birthday I bought him tickets to Dubai. We went this last week and had an awesome time. We left late at night and got in arround midnight then got a car and started to drive to Kasab, Oman. We arrived arround three in the morning, got a couple of hours sleep and then woke up at eight to go diving.

Our first dive of the day was to a place Cat Eye Island. We both forgot our skins but did not think it a big deal at first because the water was so warm. Soon after entering the water my skin started to feel irritated. Carl was signaling to me that there were jelly fish and I kept looking for them, until my eyes adjusted. There were jellies all right, millions of little tiny ones everywhere and they were stinging every part of exposed sking including our lips. There were a few times when the water cleared of them but then they would come again in swarms. Carl got stung really bad on his knee and my lips were really burning by the end of the dive. The dive itself was definitely not worth the sacrifice of comfort, there was a lot of sand between anything else. We did spot a green sea turtle though which is always nice.

Our next dive was at Eagle bay, this was by far a better dive. First of all there were not the hordes of jellies previously experienced but best of all we saw a leopard shark. We were so excited, it came swimming by and then was gone. Sharks always swim by us so fast we can't get a picture. Really I think it is that we are so excited that we forget about the cameral altogether until it is too late. This dive was much better for coral and animal life also.

We went into town to find something to eat and found that town consists of one block. We decided on a restraunt once it opened and discovered we like chicken makboos, it was really good. It was also very economical, with that came a salad, water and we also ordered some curry and it came with bread all for the great price of 2 OMR.

We decided to do a night dive Kosmi wreck which ended up being really great. The wreck was small but there were lots of holes and openings to look in. There was an enormous lion fish, it was beautiful. There were also smaller ones that really liked our flashlights, they used the light to see fish to atack, the large one went after a fish from our light while we were there. Then one of the smaller fish decided he liked the light so followed us and got a little too close for comfort. In fact, Carl was using his light for some pictures, when I came upon him I saw that a lion fish was poised right at his head but he was looking elsewhere so he did not see it. I pulled him away and we decided to stay clear of the lion fish. Something else that really liked our light were some neon worms, that is the only way to explain them, they were twirling all arround the light. The ship was small so after an hour and seeing everything we thought there was to see, we ended the dive.

After a good nights sleep we woke and headed off for our second day of diving. Our first dive was not our favorate, a lot of sand again between coral. Our next dive at Pee Pee beach was really great, we loved it. It was quite shallow but the coral was really beautiful and neverending. We came upon some area where the coral were like walls fallen against each other, it was really cool, we could swim through and arround. There were really large pufferfish, eels and sea urchins everywhere. At one point we saw another green turtle and swam with it for a while, as that one left we turned and saw one twice as big, it swim near us and then took off.

The next morning we went to Dubai, we had heard how great it was but we were not so impressed, it pretty much looked like any big city you would see anywhere and the airport that was said to be so nice was really lacking to us. My reccomendation of the places we have been thus far would be to visit Oman, it is lovely, keeps their culture and the people are really friendly.

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