Customer Name: Hilary W. and Party
Date of travel: January 2016
Destination: Oman
Holiday description: 7 nights on-board the Saman Explorer
We got back last night, tired but happy, except for coming back to rain!
Having been before, I can give you a few extra details about the holiday.
The liveaboard was rated by everyone the best we have ever been on, it was superb, food excellent, very nicely decorated, cabins spacious, very clean and all the staff very helpful. Karim was the dive guide last time and is still as good, very sensible about accepting that we all dive together a lot and are fairly self-regulating. Dive briefings were excellent and we always got in the water at the specified time. The only negative on the boat was that the showers were rather on the chilly side, some cabins had hot water but several only had tepid, that's OK on the warmer days but not so good when there is a chilly wind blowing and we need to warm up a bit.
Visibility was not so good to start with, it had been windy, but was OK later on. However the fish life was more prolific than 2 years ago, we were nearly always surrounded by big shoals of fusiliers etc.
Pick-ups and transfers were excellent apart from getting to the hotel from the liveaboard. The taxi drivers took us to the wrong hotel first, then the Marriott and finally to the correct hotel. It was entirely their fault, Karim told them where to take us and they weren't very sensible with sorting it out at the first wrong hotel, so in no way reflects on the organisation of the holiday. The hotel was lovely as well, no complaints from anyone about anything. Well, just that we didn't get to swim with whales but we did have a sighting from the boat!
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Compared with other places to go, especially Maldives liveaboards, this holiday is excellent value for money, the diving is different but I prefer it with the variety and sheer quantity of fish life in Oman and, although we didn't see sharks, the whales make up for that.
Thanks for your hard work in getting this together for us, I'm sure we will be contacting you again soon.
Regards,
Hilary
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