Dawn breaks over Muscat and the city stirs—muezzins call, sea breezes slip through the corniche, and the Al Hajar Mountains glow the color of copper. Within an hour you’re rolling east along the coast, limestone headlands shouldering the Gulf of Oman. At Bimmah Sinkhole the earth yawns open, inviting a swim in its 20-meter-deep turquoise bowl. Fins Beach flashes white and blue, and then the trail into Wadi Shab begins—35–45 minutes of sunlit canyon walking as the wadi coaxes you upstream to hidden pools and a rock-slit cave where a small waterfall whispers in the dark.