Salalah, Oman, November 18,2014 Today I landed in camel heaven. For some reason I have always found watching camels absolutely riveting. I know they can be a bit nasty and argumentative but they have such distinct personalities . I love the groaning sounds they make as they lift their loads or talk to each other. The black ones are just beautiful. The babies are the cutest things. Anyway Salalah is a small city of about 80,000 on the Arabian gulf just west of Yemen . It is the capital of the Omani province of Dhofar and has been around for thousands of years as a stop on the Silk Road between the Mediterranean and China . The land along the Sea is flat for about 3-4 miles inland and then it rises abruptly up to 5000 foot mountains. The winds from Africa bring rains called the Khalief from May to September which turns the area green, otherwise it is a dry desert which is pretty much what we saw.  We went with another couple , Bill and Mary Estelle Amgen for a tour with Mohammed , our 49 year old driver. He has 6 daughters and now a baby son. He has 2 grandchildren already ,all living with him and his wife. the houses we saw as we drove east along the coast were quite large, made of cement blocks , somewhat ornate but totally devoid of any outside planting or shrubs, just sand or dust. It looked so odd , as though they were in an unfinished subdivision. Even odder were the multitudes of wandering camels just walking along the roadsides. I guess they are branded but they just seemed to go where the wind blew them. Mohammed would stop the car and call to them with a certain song which made them prick up their ears and wander over. In Oman they eat the camels and drink their milk. They also race them. I would guess we saw over a thousand camels .Until 1970 there almost no roads and only 3 elementary schools in the whole country. The very conservative Sultan was deposed and his son , the present Sultan, whose 74th birthday was being celebrated today as a national holiday, commenced an era of building and progression. Today the roads are excellent, women are educated , people seem somewhat prosperous. Gas is cheap at 50 cents a gallon .They have some oil reserves. All the men we saw wore the long white robes called a dishdasha. I saw no women at all though we drove for 5 hours but I do know they wear abayas and cover completely. We visited Ayn Razat a swimming hole and park at the foot of the mountains, Khor Rori which was now a ruin but formerly a frankincense trading port. The Queen of Sheba had also lived here. Taqa and Mirbat were old fishing villages with ancient houses.  It was such an interesting day . Of course the camels were almost the best part. I am a little ashamed at how many pictures I took of them.