It’s great to have Flickr and all, but I am utterly unimpressed with all the options for embedding photos on this website. As I am sure you have noticed, periodically some new thumbnails appear in the sidebar indicating there are new photos. Unfortunately, Flickr does not publish an RSS feed for the new sets as they are created, so I am forced to make individual posts to let you know of each new group of shots. This is not ideal. I would prefer a “new set” notification that was tied directly to some output from Flickr. Well, for now, that won’t be possible and I’ll have to write about each thing in a normal post.

Last weekend, for the last weekend of my friend Diana’s Dubai visit, we over to the east coast of the UAE to the Emirate of Fujairah with a few friends. From there we headed a bit north to Dibba, and then crossed the border into Oman, without Visas or a security check, and onto a Dhow (wooden boat). The dhow “sailed” north along the coast for about 2 hours until we were just off the shore of Musandam, where tuna, dolphins, and jellyfish are plentiful, and the snorkeling/diving is excellent. I took pictures of the mountainous coastline before swimming out into the reef. The snorkeling (I don’t dive, yet) was OK with some sea turtles and coral and assorted tropical-looking fish, but not that exciting. The location itself was amazing and well worth the trip out, but not really the fish. Also, we weren’t lucky enough to see any fish.

Afterwards, we drove back to Fujairah and stayed at the locally famous Sandy Beach Hotel. The next morning we snorkeled around “Snoopy Island,” which I have shown pictures of before, that looks like Snoopy laying on his back on his doghouse. That snorkeling was much better than Oman, with sea turtles, puffer fish, many exotic tropical things, and sharks. Yes, sharks.

I heard rumors of the reef sharks, but never expected that they would actually be swimming around. Around the back side of the island I bumped into my friend Will who asked if I had seen “the sharks.” Of course, I had not, which should have been obviously because I was swimming and not skipping across the water like a speedboat. He pointed out where they were swimming and we waited for a while for them to return. I waited for about 5 minutes and then got bored, and a little scared, and swam away. About 50 meters away I was admiring some other fish when a 3 1/2′ blacktip reef shark swam right underneath me. Instead of panicking, which is what I always thought I might do, I turned and watched him for while, not making any sudden movements, but not staying perfectly still either. When his finally disappeared into the rocks of the reef, I decided to swim away. It was a rather incredible experience actually, though I am not sure I want to do it again.

All in all, a great weekend and a good ending to a good friend’s vacation in Dubai. I took a bunch of pictures, the best of which are up in this set on Flickr. Most of them are kind of them same, which was kind of my impression of Oman. “Oh look! Another rock…”

Enjoy.