Oman for a day

When I arrived in Dubai at the beginning of May, the immigration people managed to stamp my passport with 2nd April instead of 2nd May. Not a problem if you're on a 2 week holiday, but a bit worse when you're on a longer "holiday" and the visitor visa only lasts 60 days..

So, since the boys were coming here for half term, and we weren't going to the UK, we needed to jump the border so I could get an exit visa and a new entry visa lasting a new 60 days. Quickest and easiest way of doing this was jumping the border to Oman and back. UAE borders Oman by Al Ain, and there are loads of thing to see just across the border.

Having finally got the car, we decided to go the Friday before the boys arrived, around middle of May. We left early in the morning, and I drove part of the way. First time I drove an automatic car, and one with cruise control. A pleasure to drive with cruise control. You just accelerate, put it on, lean back and steer. Easiest thing in the world. We crossed the UAE border post with only minor issues, we'd left the car registration at home..

Once across we headed to Wadi Madbah, a small wadi with a waterfall and a couple of rock pools. One of them was deep and big enough to swim in. It was amazingly refreshing to swim in, water was cool even though it was surrounded by hot rock. I was expecting it to be as warm as the pool here was. It took me a while to work up the courage to get in, the rock pool was full of small fish that nibbled at your toes when you stood barefoot in the shallow part.

One of the pools was completely white, and smelled slightly of sulfur. No idea why just this particular pool was like that, as none of the others had any of the white stuff in them. This particular pool had no fish or frogs in it, whilst the others where overflowing with both. It was a bit weird when one of the frogs decided to check us out and swam between us.

After having relaxed a bit at the pool, we got on with our trip. Next stop was the old village Kuthwa, and it's oasis. A really idyllic place, with shade from date palms and mango trees and small fields of squares cultivating different herbs. One patch, around some date palms, had mint growing everywhere. The smell was just fantastic.

We tried to follow the falaj (old waterway used to transport water, and is still used today) up to some rock pools that were meant to be a mere 20 min walk up the wadi. But it got too hot. It was over 40 degrees outside, and the heat was beating down from the sun, and up from the rocks, and I had to go back into the shade, with a slight heatstroke, enough for S to pour cold water over my head to help me cool down.

NB!! If any of you Google to find out what a falaj is, be careful. I went to a page about Oman, and got Trojan's infested in my laptop. The web address was something like "nizwas" or something like that.

After that we decided it was a little too hot to walk outside without rock pools or shade to keep us cool, so we thought we'd head back. And a good thing we decided to too. The border posts for Oman are not located together with the border posts for the UAE. Instead of being on the border, they are further inland. So, with all our sightseeing, we had not passed a border post for Oman, and when we tried to enter UAE again, we were told we had to go and get and entry and exit stamp for Oman before we could enter again. So off we went again, past Wadi Madbah and into the Oman mountains in search of a border post.

There was luckily no traffic at this border post, and the guys working there were kind enough to give us both the entry and the exit stamp at the same time, and so after we got our passports back, we could just turn around and drive back the way we came. Not quite what I expected, but hey, it worked, and it was fairly smooth. Apparently the problem was my passport, and as a visitor I needed the proper stamps.

So, after a lot of driving, some red tape and seeing a couple of really good places, we headed back to Dubai again, having visited one more country. They are adding up now ;)