The kids were in Dubai

One thing I have not written about was when the boys were out in Dubai. We had a great time, going to the beach every morning, and either getting stuck in the desert, watching a movie or doing other indoor things in the afternoon..

The first afternoon we decided to go for a off road desert drive to Fossil Rock. We started off quite good, took some air out of the tires and set off. Unfortunately we got a bit lost, and when we found a round, dual carriage with two lanes in each direction, we headed on down to find out where we were. It ended in nothing. Absolutely nothing but desert. Like a piece of road carried off by giants and that had just been dropped some arbitrary place. So we headed in the other direction..

Luckily we found the track we were meant to be on and got on our way again. And were doing very well, until we got to Camel rock. This is a bug rock that just sticks out of the sand dunes in the shape of a camel. There the dunes looked a bit steep, and we were struggling to find the so called track we were meant to be following, so we decided to head off the dunes and into the valley below. Unfortunately the car got stuck on the very last sand dune, and we had to go out and dig. Not having shovels in the car, meant we had to dig with what we had, our arms. The boys were sent to sit in the shade, and we got digging.

The six-year-old was not especially enamoured with the whole situation, and kept asking if we would be stuck there through the night or forever. But we could see a village just at the head of the valley, and we did have mobiles with us, so we were not going to be stuck there forever. However, for a little boy aged six, this is not easy to understand, not when you're terrified at the same time, so he kept panicking. All the while we were trying our best to get the wheels to rest on sand.

Having eventually managed to do so, we tried the car, but it wouldn't start. We thought it had overheated, and tried to calm the six-year-old enough to wait for the engine to cool. Luckily there was a group of trucks passing us with a load of tourists, and they could happily tell us that the engine had not overheated, the battery was flat.. So they pulled us off and started our battery for us. And we headed home by the quickest and easiest route.

The next day the battery was just as flat, and it turned out that it was a duff battery. So, only having had the car just over 2 weeks, we headed to the shop and had them change it to a brand new, good one. Free, of course. Warranty and all that..

We also went to the east coast, to Sandy Beach and Snoopy Island. On our way there we went by Hatta and swam at Hatta Pools. S (I know I was going to call him my/the partner, but it doesn't sound right) jumped off the side and into the pool, but that was just too scary for me. About 5m up and you couldn't see the bottom of the pool. We knew that you could jump there, others have done it before us, but I don't like jumping from 3m even, let alone anything higher.

Sandy Beach was great. The cabins were basic, but you weren't there to sit in a cabin, but snorkel at Snoopy Island! We went off immediately, abandoning everything in the cabin. It was shallow enough to walk out when the tide was out, and about 100m to swim. We saw all kinds of weird and wonderful fish, and the ten-year-old even saw a shark. To be honest we didn't believe him to begin with, but then we found out that there are black tipped reef sharks there, and now we're envious and want to go back and see sharks ourselves..

On our way back from Sandy Beach, we decided to go the off road route through Wadi Bih. Absolutely stunning landscaped, with rock formations in all directions, and huge boulders just slumped in the bottom here and there, like those same giants had played with them, sending them down the riverbed, and they were just left where they stopped.

Unfortunately the route is mostly in Oman, with small border posts at the borders. So after over 2 hrs of driving, we arrived at the border post only to be told the border was closed!! We had to drive all the way back, which did go considerably quicker, but then we had to drive all the way over to Dubai again. It felt like we were in the car all day!