Fujairah

Fujairah is the only Emirate without any coast on the Persian-Arabian Gulf. It is located on the east coast of Arabia and has a coast to the Gulf of Oman, which is part of the Indian Ocean.

It covers 1.165 km² and has 112.000 residents, that's only little more than 3% of the entire population of the UAE.

The agriculture is the dominating economy and the isolated location lead to the fact, that only in 1976 the first road towards the other parts of the UAE was established. In 1981 the port was opened and in 1987 an airport. They call it nowadays also an international airport and they founded as well an own airline (RAK Airways), but the start of this airline was postponed several times, so let's see.

On the shores there are some hotels, from a 5-star Hilton to only 2-star simple hostels. But when you drive along the coast you can see a lot of new construction sites. This means that the construction boom now also gets a grip on Fujairah. Hopefully it will not destroy the lovely coast line with all the different snorkeling and diving spots.

Another advantage of Fujairah is that during the summer time the winds come from the Indian Ocean and they blow the extremely hot desert air away. That's the reason the temperatures here are about 10 degrees centigrade lower than e.g. in Abu Dhabi. And the humidity is also very low. This makes Fujairah to a preferred location for a weekend during the summer.

The old fort and the surrounding ruins show you the long history of Fujairah. Very interesting is that until 20-30 years ago there have been no ruins but real inhabited houses out of clay bricks.