This is the view from our hotel in the city of Abha. The city is up at about 2000 meters (5000 ft) and is much cooler, greener and cleaner than Jeddah.
We were up at the highest point in Saudi Arabia.
There is, of course, a park there.
There were quite a few baboons in the area. They have apparently come over from Africa and are considered native to Saudi Arabia. We saw a rather large group coming around wanting to be fed.
The group took the cable car down into the valley. During this trip, we were actually on three different cable cars.
Here is the official sign at the top of the cable car showing the altitude as 2717 meters above mean sea level (8830 feet). No wonder it was cooler than Jeddah (sea level).
This is Marwan, our guide, exiting the car at the bottom. He has been our guide for Madain Salah and Schweber Beach trips, too. He is a Saudi Arabian and wears a thobe and ghuptra (traditional costume) when the group is traveling but wears western dress for actual touring. A very nice guy! He is looking for a western wife if you are interested!
This is our token secret policeman in the follow car. He followed us wherever we went to protect us. Notice the sunglasses which he never took off!
This is the Rejal museum. It is mostly unoccupied but was once a thriving community. We think they built it like this as protection from the heat. There was a rather spirited discussion about the wooden structures which stick out. Some maintained they were bathrooms but gave up when it was pointed out that they are all on top of the other! The guides tend to give out almost no information about anything. We are not sure why.
This is from the interior of the museum. It reminded Jim of museums about the 1930’s in Kansas; pretty much whatever they could find is suddenly “historic” and is put in the museum.
This is the gold souk (market). The shops in the background look like a strip mall, but that is exactly what the old traditional markets have become. The shops are small and air conditioned; not like the old black and white movies! The guy on the back of the truck is hawking whatever he had in the truck using a loudspeaker system. We don’t speak Arabic, but he was obviously saying things like: “This price is so low, I’m practically giving it away!” and “If the price was any lower, I would be giving the money to YOU!”
This is a typical gas station. Notice the marble floor! Notice the lack of prices. Gasoline is a state controlled business and the prices are all the same everywhere in the Kingdom (about $0.70/gal). About 5-10 years ago, the price was $1.50 per fill up. It didn’t matter if you needed 5 liters or 500; the price was the same!
This is a house built to show the historical style. The rock walls are easy to understand. The mud walls were built with flat stones inset to act as a rain gutter and push the water away from the wall. Easy concept and it definitely shows you that it rains here!
This tent roof shows how colorful they can be on the inside. This is actually inside a large party hall.
This is the group of musicians who were hired for the night. We weren’t there for the party (a group of Abha businessmen hired the entire complex for the night!), but we got to watch their dress rehearsal.
This is the edge of the escarpment where we rode our second cable car down to the “hanging village”. Like the cliff dwellers of the American Southwest, they were very difficult places to attack.
This is part of the village seen from the cable car.
Here we are having tea with most of the traveling group down at the village.
This little Polish girl (Katrina) was dressed up by one of the guys at the local museum! Jim has entered the photo in the annual Historical Society photo contest (results later!).
Notice the solar panels for the cable car. They power the emergency radio and lights in the car. The cable car system is powered with plain diesel generated electricity.
Typical picnic area at one of the national parks near Abha. Notice the actual grass growing without a sprinkler system. You probably will never understand how rare this is in this country!
This is an example of the terracing used to make maximum use of the rainfall. Without it, most of the area would just be a brown desert.
Typical view of the city of Abha. Definitely greener and cleaner than Jeddah.
Nice art deco colors of part of the city. We were in our third cable car when we took this photo.
Saudi family picnicking. Notice the lady reading a newspaper!
We were trying to take the sunset, but the ladies kept peeking at us and taking our pictures with their cell phones. They had probably never seen that many bare headed women in their lives! The men were seated at a separate table to the left. We were, of course, seated men and women mixed and the women were not just MBO’s (Moving Black Objects).
