Into the cave

After our relaxing swimming stops we made our way further along the coast, again over a mixture of paved and dirt roads. We soon reached the mouth of Wadi bin Shab right along the coast. We picnicked in the shadow of the new bridge they are building for the high speed road between Muscat and Sur, another reminder of how quickly this country is changing. Our hike started on the other side of the water filled wadi and after passing an Omani villager trying to teach a Chinese construction worker how to fish, we entered the falaj fed palm trees.

This walk started in the blisteringly hot sun along the rocky wadi. We soon gained the blissfully temperate shade of the rock walls and followed the ledges along the wadi for a while before reaching the first jump into the deeper water. Wadi Shab is a bit of an interesting one, since the mouth is affected by the tides and then moving further up it dries out entirely, before reaching the deep, permanently water filled pools that lead further and further into the gorge. After the exertion of walking up the sun drenched wadi, that first plunge was nothing short of heavenly!

From there we swam, walked, clamoured and plunged for a while before arriving at what at first appears to be an impassable rock face. This is misleading, because really there is a small hole in the rocks that allows you to access a cave within the rocks.

If you look closely enough in the middle of the image, you can see a small hole which is just barely large enough for a head. A palm tree was stuck in the top of the hole so you were forced to duck under water for a few seconds to get into the cave.

It is not a fully enclosed cave, but rather a confluence of large boulders that have come to a rest here, blocking up the wadi except for a waterfall that can be climbed to reach the upper reaches of the wadi. It is fully flooded however and you have to swim, tread water and hold onto the cave walls at all times. You could swim behind the waterfall into a small space just barely big enough for two people.

It is a magical spot, completely cut off from the world, with the water cascading into the pool in two places and just enough sunlight filtering in from the top to allow you a sense of the outside expanses of the canyon.

After swimming under a couple of the ledges and under the waterfall, we took turns climbing up the waterfall using the ropes that have been left for just this purposem (see ropes on bottom right corner of image above).

It isn’t as slippery as one would expect, though caution was still required and after a couple of minutes you emerge into the brilliant sunshine above the cave.

The wadi continues on into the mountains, in fact you can actually follow it through to the other side and Wadi bani Khalid, which we visited the next day (more on that soon).

However our journey was back the way we came and therefore we made our way to the other side of the large rock which the waterfall flows past and onto the ledges above the cave. From here you command a full view of the deep pool within the cave, standing about five or six metres above the water.

It is a bit daunting, but you don’t think about that, you just stand, take a strong step forward and hurl yourself into the air! The journey is a short couple of seconds, but oh how exhilarating! If the climb up the waterfall wasn’t such a pain, I would have gladly gone again and again!

Note of thanks again to Thierry for letting us use his camera yet again for this escapade. Since the whole trip was pretty much in the water this was not a place for mine but instead for a small compact camera like his which is waterproof up to 10m.