We arrived in sunny Bandar Abbas after a reckless night bus journey, arriving 2 hours early thanks to speeding. Bandar Abbas is less touristy and more run down.

Morning in Bandar Abbas

The most suitable word is ugly.

Ugly

Tents on a car park

The good thing about this city is the sea. We went to Hormuz Island by ferry. The journey takes about 50 minutes and costs 2,000,000 rials ($4) one-way.

Ferry

Shipping refreshing drinks

Hormuz

Port in Hormuz

There’s no real life in Hormuz apart from tourism. The roads are dusty.

We weren’t able to exchange money in Bandar Abbas so we explored the island by foot, but you can take tours on tuk-tuks. After buying tickets, we only had an equivalent of $7 in rials left.

Closed egg-shaped hotel

Beach

The sand is nice and shiny. The water is not clear, salty and shallow. Swimming in the sea marked the peak of our trip. After travelling South we finally enjoyed the hot sun and refreshing water in the Persian Gulf.

You can see big tankers in the distance.

After the beach we went inland towards the mountains.

The landscape is very distinct. The dry deserty vibes remind me of the volcanic landscapes on Lanzarote.

There’s lots of salt. I tried it and verified that it’s salty.

Salty brook

White shoes white salt

Mountains

Salty lake

However dead those places may seem, there’s still life here. I saw two antelopes.

Antelopes

Soon we returned back to the city. We tried to exchange money, but we weren’t successfull. We had less than $5 left. For the first time we paid close attention to prices.

In the evening we had a domestic flight from Bandar Abbas to Tehran, which we booked on the day before at a travel agency. The airline (Caspian Air) doesn’t even have a website. We wanted to spend 2 days here, but the agent advised us to have more spare time before our international flight, because of the frequent delays and cancellations. The ticket cost $36. The flight was quite an experience: the plane was an old McDonell Douglas from the 1980s.

We spent another day in Tehran before heading back to Moscow.