G’day folks! Last Sunday I wrote about the twilight zone experience of I went through when in Muscat. This weekend I am writing about the real highlights of this very cool city – today I will write about my snorkelling half-day trip to the Daymaniyat Islands, and tomorrow I will be going through the sights I took in in fair Muscat town!

The company I went with, due primarily to excellent online reviews, was called ‘Daymanyiat Shells’ – not that I encountered a number of different spellings of ‘Daymaniyat’ so I apologise for the variations that may appear in this post.

The tour left from the Al Mouj Marina, which was a good 20-25 minute Uber ride from my hotel (but would have been more than double that from the Corniche/Old Town area). There I waited with a bunch of others for the tour to start. I had booked online the previous evening and they had given me a call to confirm. The Al Mouj Marina was just beyond the air port, and would guess by looking at Google Maps that it was around 40km from the marina to the islands. The cost was 30 Omani Rials, which today comes in at around $78USD.

The company had us waiting outside a little booth and then split us all into two groups before heading to the boats. There were I think around 10-12 people on the tour plus our captain. We would pay (by card but I think cash was possible) AFTER the trip at the booth. The boat was plenty big enough for the number on board and had a little toilet on board too which I used (and slipped) during the trip. It was clean and didn’t smell but it was pokey in there and not really comfortable to be fair. And as I mentioned, slippery!

The ride out, from memory which I confess is a bit hazy, took around 45 minutes to get out to the islands. There are a few of them, the one main one though is where the boats stop for the snorkelling and diving. The water was beautifully warm and on this tour we made two separate stops for about 45 minutes snorkelling and an hour or so on the second.

The first spot was the best. Somehow I found myself first off the boat. The snorkel, goggles and flippers were included in the price but not a wetsuit. Well I jumped in and wow, not far from the boat were fish, fish and more fish. Bright colours, really amazing. But then there he/she was! A SEA TURTLE! Amazing creatures, these ones were not put off by humans in the water with their funny flippers and cameras. They actually were calm and seemed at ease.

There I saw at least four of these amazing creatures. The second location was all fish, and a beach which was pretty nice too. Who knew there were such locations in the Gulf of Oman? I was certainly surprised.

I don’t know what else I can tell you about the day, apart from I lost audio for a lot of my footage. I used my underwater camera and was pretty happy with the results. To get a real idea of the day check out my video above!

Thanks for popping by today! Wherever you are in the world, take care, and May the Journey Never End!