We traveled from Abu Dhabi overnight, arriving in Fujairah Port around 9:30 this morning. The eastern coastline of UAE is mountainous, so the approach to Fujairah is quite different than to either Dubai or Abu Dhabi, which are flat. I had arranged a day long tour, so we met our guide just after 10. We went to Fujairah Museum, with local finds dating to the Iron Age. Next we stopped at Fujairah Fort, considered the oldest fort in the UAE, sitting on a hill overlooking the coast and the city of Fujairah, with about 150,000 people. We stopped to take photos of the new Sheikh Zayed Mosque, the second largest in UAE with 65 domes and 6 minarets, it will hold 28,000 worshippers.
Next we visited another fort, Al Hayl Fort, built in 1830 in a remote area of mountains. We stopped at the Friday Market near Masafi, selling mostly fruits, vegetables, cookware, and rugs. We made a circle through the mountains, up to Dibba, then down the coast back to Fujairah. Our last stop was at the oldest mosque in the UAE, at Al Bidya. Built in 1446, it is a simple four domed mosque with a stone fort tower above it on a hill overlooking the sea. It was an interesting day, yielding a different perspective on UAE than we had gotten from the big cities. There was a lot of construction everywhere we went, big brand hotels along the sea north of Fujairah in quite remote areas, and fields of oil tanks along the sea adjacent to Fujairah Port. We also saw hundreds of tanker boats sitting off the coast. Many have been there for years, holding oil while the price is low.
