It is turtle season! There are endangered turtle species who nest in Oman and we took direction Ras al Hadd, east from Muscat to see them. There are many beaches where turtles nest, but there is only one protected on the mainland - Ras Al Jinz. Here cars are strictly prohibited and it is also guarded which makes it the only place where it is guaranteed to see turtles. It is a major issue, that people drive on the beaches and thus destroy nests and also light can distract the small ones who will take a wrong turn and never make it to the sea or scare off the grown ups who will not lay eggs.
We tried to combine the best of the two sites: Ras Al Hadd beach resort is super nice (nothing fancy, basic but clean with OK buffet for breakfast and dinner) and there is a beach where we could even snorkel. For turtle watching we went to Ras Al Jinz: we had been there in 2016 but we took the evening tour and we did not see small ones. This time we took the morning tour (4.30 wake up call.. not popular) and we saw plenty of small ones!
One afternoon we rented a boat with a funny captain who took us around a bit and we snorkeled and saw turtles all over - even mating. But the most spectacular was the ride with the dolphins - there were a lot of them and they kept swimming back and jumping out of the water! It was amazing, we have never seen anything like this. Unfortunately the water camera is slow and I idiot did not think of video - well we have them in our memory!
These are the dolphins.. if you look close enough.. or use your imagination!
Swimming with the turtles - it is not a proper underwater camera, but you can get the feeling :). We snorkeled in two different spots - the green is more shallow water, the blue is deeper (we did not see the bottom).
Ras Al Jinz turtle reserve
Small ones paddle to towards the see.
Look carefully at the bottom right corner... a small one racing the big one :)
Alma helped a few lost ones to return back to the sea - sadly one was picked up by a seagull right after.
The nests are deep, feels like these little ones have to climb Mount Everest..
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