Setting foot at one of Saudi's mountain tours and travel destinations, Fayfa Mountain Range is somewhat winning a prize with inexplicable jubilation.
The height that people can climb using the car and the sprawling sights of the farmlands, the lake, and the meandering road from the base to the top and its branches going to different directions always awe the visitors and have become why it draws thousands of tourists every year. These things make Fayfa/Fifa Mountain one of the exciting places to visit in Jazan, Saudi Arabia.
The rhapsody of green to bluish scenery is a startling spectacle that can make your body hair stand. The gulley, mountain ridges, and the colorful structures built on top, on the slope, and afoot make it unsurprising for somebody like me to consider exploring this mountain.
Fayfa Mountain is 100 km from the city center of Jazan City, suitable for a 1 hour and 45-minute drive on concrete and excellent road condition. As you move your way to the top, there are plenty of points where you will get tempted to stop; look around and click your cameras to capture each moment that gives spectacular scenes that feed your eyes frame by frame, inch by inch, and ridge by ridge.
After the 8-minute drive from the Fayfa entry point, we stopped for a while to do some shots and capture the astonishing sights of the mountains, the ridges, hills, and the vast farmlands in Fayfa down near the base of Fayfa mountain.
The stopping point depends on your guide because its guide has its own identified issues to bring his tourists other than the significant points that are publicly known.
As a solo traveler shooting for my places, which could be my subject on my blogs, I do the adventure in a one-on-one guiding route, and whenever I see I need to stop to shoot a subject, I ask my guide to stop.
A visit to a coffee farm in Fayfa Mountain, Jazan, Saudi Arabia, only proves that weather conditions in this tropical province of Saudi Arabia make no difference with my homeland, the Philippines. The temperature, the humidity, the random rainfalls, the vegetation, and other things made me feel like I was walking around my home.
Another thing that excited me during the adventure was that I was about to see an Arabic coffee tree for the first time. From the first time I tasted Arabic Coffee, I was curious about its look. Does it look the same as the Barako coffee in the Philippines? And yes, it does look the same. The slight difference is that it is shorter than the coffee tree we have on our farm, and the wait period from the time of planting until it bears fruit. Arabic Coffee, according to the farm owner, takes two years before it bears fruit, while in the case of our native coffee, Barako Coffee, you need to wait at least five years from the day that the seedling is planted. Nevertheless, these differences did not remove the fact that Jazan is genuinely a tropical region of Saudi Arabia.
The climate similarities with what we have in my country were genuinely justified when I found the chili pepper species endemic in my place, growing in Jazan. This species of chili pepper is at home, "Siling Labuyo." Siling Labuyo is known to have been endemic to my place, though it thrives in other regions in the Philippines, but not as pervasive as in my place. So, finding this species of chili pepper in Jazan, in Fayfa mountain, specifically boosted my feeling of being at home in my favorite province in the Kingdom. Aside from the "Siling Labuyo," other endemic plants I saw thriving in Fayfa Mountain are:
Tanglad (Lemon grass)
Albaha (other species of basil)
Papaya
Atis (fruit tree, Gaesta, as the locals call it, but I am not sure if I got it right)
Lakatan (species of banana)
Palo Maria (species of forest tree)
Setting aside the similarities, Fayfa Mountain is a must-visit place in Jazan and worth exploring during your visit or sojourn during the breaks. Its unseen magnetic enigma from the outside adds to its appealing sensation of nature’s boon and pristine.
Quick Facts:
Name: Fayfa Mountain
Location: Jazan, Saudi Arabia
Distance from Jazan City: 100 Km
Road Condition: Excellent, but climbing, you need to deal with some steep
portions. A 4WD car is highly recommended.
Activities You Can Do
Sightseeing
Hiking
Camping
Picnic
Farm Visit
The author suggests that if you are coming for the first time to this mountain, you should have a guide who is familiar with the places of interest so that your efforts and time visiting Fayfa will take you to the points you want to visit.
Thanks to Mr. Yahya Al Fify for the warm accommodation during my visit and my guide, Mr. Fuad Al Kubaisy, who always brings to places with many surprises in Jazan.
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