{"id":163,"date":"2006-05-02T08:24:09","date_gmt":"2006-05-02T05:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/amy\/?p=163"},"modified":"2006-05-02T09:30:04","modified_gmt":"2006-05-02T06:30:04","slug":"sea-and-sand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/amy\/?p=163","title":{"rendered":"Sea and Sand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So we are back in Beirut after about 9 days in the Sultanate of Oman.  We actually got back on Sunday afternoon, but somehow I have felt too drained to post about it.  I&#8217;m going to have to do it in parts or I fear it will never happen.<\/p>\n<p>The first photos that we have are actually from about halfway through the trip.  This is because my camera broke.  It just stopped turning on.  The moment I realized this was about 5:30 AM one morning, as Ethan and I watched a huge sea turtle who had just finished covering her eggs.  She slowly and with pauses returned to the sea, a truly stirring sight.  I struggled to focus on watching her and not fiddle with my camera.  Even after she was gone, I really wanted that camera&#8211; the sun was rising, the beach was littered with scurrying crabs, everything was washed in a gorgeous light.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to this loss of camera on about Day 5 of the trip, we had already had some pretty great adventures.  Most notably, we went snorkeling in the Indian Ocean.  It was the first time that I had ever tried it, aside from just goofing around on a few beaches in Puerto Rico where I saw a few rather ordinary fish.  We went on a boat full of divers and snorkelers to a spot known as Mermaid Cove.  It was amazing .. we saw hundreds and hundreds of fish of every color and shape you can imagine.  We saw 2 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moray_eel\">moray eels<\/a>, which are sort of creepy.  On a second snorkeling trip later in the week, we saw scorpion fish, lion fish, and even a huge ray swimming below us.<\/p>\n<p>Anyhow, on to the first batch of pictures, taken with our brand new camera, purchased in the fairly provincial town of Sur.  We wanted to see some desert dunes, but it&#8217;s already quite hot in Oman.  We decided to get up at 5 AM and just take a walk in the desert for a few hours before the heat became unbearable.  This part of the desert is known as Wahiba Sands.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"images\/journal_20060502.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"images\/journal_20060502a.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"images\/journal_20060502b.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"images\/journal_20060502c.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"images\/journal_20060502d.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So we are back in Beirut after about 9 days in the Sultanate of Oman. We actually got back on Sunday afternoon, but somehow I have felt too drained to post about it. I&#8217;m going to have to do it in parts or I fear it will never happen. The first photos that we have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/amy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/amy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/amy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/amy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/amy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/amy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/amy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/amy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plutino.net\/journals\/amy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}