From its heyday back in the late 40’s and 50’s there are only a few cruising companies now who actually offer around the world cruises. P and O is one of them and for some reason on this circumnavigation of the globe they have offered us three stops in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The port of Khor Al Fukka at Al Fujairah is our third stop and a place that I was not going to blog about. Darryl has convinced me that it is probably worth including simply for mentioning the sheer desolation of the place, the amazing number of oil silos we saw and the incredible number of cargo ships waiting off shore – ready to transport this oil to all corners of the globe.
We arrived in Khor al Fukka early one morning and on opening our cabin curtains were quite taken with the totally bare rocky hills angling steeply down to the flat white town below. Not having been enticed by any of the offered excursions we decided to utilise the free shuttle bus offering to take us into what we thought was the nearby town we could see from our ship. Thirty minutes later and we alighted from the shuttle rather bemused. We had totally bypassed the interesting little town and had instead headed straight into the hills and out the other side. The other side was flat and barren but thought-provoking as we proceeded to pass through km after km of oil silos partially hidden by an incredibly long fence. This I can only assume is a storage facility for that often fought over commodity before transportation to the four corners of the earth. Our photos cannot do it justice.
Wondering just where the heck were we – we had to laugh when we passed through some doors and into a huge empty shopping mall. Filled with a wide array of shops where many of us proceeded to purchase items we didn’t even realise we needed – my lingering thoughts are still – who is this mall for? It was bereft of locals and having been forewarned about how conservative this UAE Emirate was – the sight of revealing lingerie stores was very surprising. Whatever – I didn’t get an answer to my question and I still don’t know.
After attempting to find out if there was anything nearby worth visiting and receiving a resounding negative – it was back on the shuttle and back to the ship. That afternoon saw us up on the top deck – beer and wine in hand, YMCA blaring from the loud speakers, passengers dancing as we bade farewell to the UAE. As mentioned earlier – it was from here that we saw a vast number of cargo ships (literally hundreds) just waiting – ready to collect that waiting oil.
