Rakhyut-meaning A land that produces much food

Nope, not Mexico, although we did do a double take on a couple of occasions. These are just farms in Sallalah.  Salalah is closish to where Oman meets Yemen. It's a rain forest during the Kariff(Monsoon) and it's amazingly different from the rest of Oman. Grass grows everywhere! Some of their major crops are Coconuts, papaya and bananas. All 3 are growing together here.

Since we had a Sabbath our first day in we chose some religious sites to visit. This is the supposed tomb of Job. It was closed, run down and locked up. Everyone else jumped the wall to have a peek so we joined them. I've been told some interesting things about the story of Job. Here are a few things to chew on. 1. Job is revered by Muslims as well as Christians and I assume Jews. 2. The language of the book of Job is unknown. The other books in the Bible can be traced but not Job's. ? 3. Job had heard of camels, cattle, etc etc. He was very rich. There are some other things in his story that I'm not thinking of. He needed lots of grazing land. That certainly would fit in with this location. Anyway. I need to do some research on my own but certainly it does give one reason to postulate.

We went West of Salalah through some crazy switchbacks and roads that went winding through mountains and wadis. We saw camels, cattle and goats all over. We came out and along the beach or along cliffs looking down to the beach. It was absolutely stunning.

I sure love these two adventurers. They were always wanting to get out and see things up close. It can be hard to get Matt to stop driving. Who knew I could marry a man so like my Dad who can just drive eternally.

Matt was very glad i insisted we get out at this viewpoint which is also the turn off to go down very steep switchbacks to get to the Fazyah Beaches. He was in love with these Desert Roses.

I'm pretty sure the animals must love the flowers and leaves because they were very rare and the leaves were always brand new if you happened to see any.

I don't have any pictures of the drive we took to get to this beach in Rakyhut. Unfortunately my fear got the better of me and I arrived overwhelmed with anxiety and several new blisters from running down the road with the camels when I couldn't handle the driving anymore. I have some pretty bad PTSD to work through about cars breaking down. There were also some very hard emotions from my Aunt Mona being in the hospital. All in all it was a time for a good cry and a lot of deep thinking. I do that pretty well with my feet in the ocean.

Sweet newly 15yr old daughter who is a good friend. Really another big thought to ponder is whether or not a family came to this coast around 600BC and built a boat and left for America. There is the name, the ancient culture of ship building, the bountiful production of food, the proximity to ore and the ocean and even trees. Really, anything is possible.

We had a lovely game night with friends after we got back to the hotel. These people have the best stories! I felt really grateful to get to know these people. The wives are American with stories of their own but they are married to Arabic men. One Egyptian and one ? Palestinian? maybe, who was a refugee as a child and grew up with this incredible Grandmother who taught him to eat anything, knew how to make poisonous food edible, sold snails to rich people so she could feed him. Really amazing.