First off, belated seasons greetings to all! We hope everyone's 2016 is off to as great a start as ours is here in the UAE. We spent Christmas in Oman and had an absolute blast. Below a recap of our adventures.
Day One: 22 December 2015
We departed for Muscat, Oman in the late afternoon and arrived at our hotel in time for supper and a good night's sleep in advance of setting off on our "Oman Highlights" guided tour early the next morning.
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| Quintus perfecting his camel riding posture at the Abu Dhabi airport. |
We met our guide, Herbert, first thing the next morning. Herbert is an Austrian expat who has lived in Oman for the past nine years. He was the perfect tour guide for us, very knowledgeable, but did not feel the need to talk about anything and everything we passed on our drive into the desert. I think the best part of the first morning was listening to Quintus perfect saying Harberk's, I mean Herbert's name.
We made one stop in an old village, Ibra, on our way to the Desert Nights Camp. At first glance, you would think the village no longer inhabited, but upon further inspection you noticed cars, antennas, etc. nestled in among the fully restored/kept-up and abandoned dwellings. While we have not done any fact checking on this, the village is purported to be more than 800 years old. We were even invited in to have Arabian coffee and dates with a local. A very cool experience.
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| Your wealth and stature is demonstrated by the ornateness of your door. |
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| Our desert dwelling. |
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| In the desert, you lock your room/tent with a padlock. |
With the cooler winter temperatures, we decided to forego shoes and go for a barefoot hike in the dunes. This was the first time Stanley and Quintus had experienced sand dunes, needless to say, we had an incredible time. My favorite part of the hike was listening to Q's endless laughter as he ran up and down the dunes.
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| VICTORY!!! |
While Desert Nights Camp provides transport to watch the sunset from the top of the dunes, we opted to stay in camp while EVERYONE else left and enjoyed the sunset from the deck of the restaurant while enjoying some adult beverages.
Day Three: 24 December 2015
The next morning we had the option of taking a camel ride around the camp, so of course, we did. Q was SUPER excited to just be near a camel, so imagine his enthusiasm when he got to ride one as well. Two young Omani boys were our guides for this adventure and their ease with the animals and the tourists was impressive.
We left Desert Nights Camp immediately following our camel ride to head to Wadi Bani Khalid. Wadis are canyons that typically have water flowing through them. Wadi Bani Khalid maintains its water flow throughout the year. While we did not hike in with our swim clothes, we did hike all the way up to a cave and enjoyed beautiful scenery and the feel of the fresh water on our feet. For some reason, Quintus forgot how to walk in flip flops on this trip, so about five minutes into the hike we decided to take his shoes off and he could walk barefoot. Never one to do things that Momma isn't doing, I walked barefoot in solidarity with Q. Which means that I carried him out on my back...
From Wadi Bani Khalid, we headed to the ancient coastal port town of Sur. We saw some cool stuff here from the original and still operating lighthouse to the last remaining Dhow boat yard in Oman. We also spent Christmas Eve in Sur and enjoyed a lavish buffet dinner, complete with snowman desserts (eat your heart out Mom) and a Santa carrying a sack made of balloons wearing latex food service gloves.
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| Omani Santa Claus |
25 December 2015
Christmas Day! After an early morning Skype with family back in Atlanta, we hit the road again to head back to Muscat with a couple of stops along the way. The first was to Wadi Tiwi, which literally translates to the Wadi of nine villages. Our guide, Herbert, took us all the way up the Wadi to all nine villages. There were some parts of this journey where I questioned whether or not we were actually on a road, especially when we had some harrowing encounters with oncoming traffic.
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| Halfway up Wadi Tiwi. |
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| Couldn't help myself with this photo - a man in traditional Omani dress capturing an image of village nine with his iPad. |
We ended our day back in Muscat, just in time for a late Christmas lunch buffet at the hotel. The first thing Q said when we he saw the dessert table was, "Whoa, Darth Vader Santa!"
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| Dessert buffet, complete with Darth Vader Santa by the yule log. |
We spent our last day in Muscat before heading to the airport and back to Abu Dhabi. We ventured through the souq where we purchased Q a local garment known as a dishdasha and did a "technical" climb up to an old fort in town.
One of the coolest things about Muscat is how the city itself is encircled in mountains. In fact, the mountains themselves are an integral part of the city. The contrast between the ancient watchtowers and the cruise ships in the port provided the perfect illustration of this ancient and beautiful part of the world.
