Fourteen miles into a hike above the Asir Mountains, American expat Alma Valenzuela pauses to point out the moss clinging to juniper branches around her. Fog rolls through most afternoons here, keeping the forest green year-round, and troops of hamadryas baboons wander close enough that Valenzuela warns against feeding them. 

None of it looks like the Saudi Arabia most people picture. Valenzuela, who moved from California in 2018 without ever having left the country before, still hasn't managed to convince her friends back home to visit. They think she's crazy. She insists the danger isn't the country, it's the trail underfoot.

That gap between reputation and reality runs through nearly everything in Saudi Arabia these days, a kingdom that stayed closed to most foreign travelers for 87 years and only recently began welcoming the rest of the world in.