From beach to dunes

A short and fairly uncomfortable night’s sleep in the tent brought us awake at 4.30 in an attempt to see more turtles or maybe the babies hatching. It was still quite dark, more so because the moon had actually set behind the mountains. We made a futile try at reaching the other beach, but the combination of rocks, waves, flip flops and darkness made us turn back for the devil we knew. Unfortunately there were no turtles to be seen on the beach, mommy or baby, but only their tracks leading to and from the water.

You can just barely see the decoy hole in this picture from where this mommy turtle came. On each side you can see the places where she placed her flippers each time to push her further back towards the water. The sand in the middle of her tracks has been flattened by the weight of her body as she carried herself towards the water, and down the middle is a line left from her tail .

We settled in the sand for a while and waited for the sunrise, watching the colony of crabs go about their business in the tide. The sunrise itself unfortunately wasn't that great because of all the clouds that morning, but it was still nice to see and a relaxing way of starting the day.

After a short kip, brought to a conclusion by the blazing sun which heats things up pretty quickly, we packed up and headed for the desert.

We stopped at Wadi bani Khalid, which was actually rather crowded with Omani families enjoying a weekend picnic or in the case of the young boys, flinging themselves off the footbridge into the pool below. We skirted all this mayhem and headed up the wadi for the peace and tranquillity of several shallow pools and low waterfalls, which we shimmied and slipped our way over.

Our destination was Miqal Cave, set up a few metres in the canyon wall. After a semi challenging climb to the mouth of the cave over what used to be some stairs before Gonu hit, we got to the entrance of the seemingly small cave. We ventured in just a few dozen metres, only far enough to get a sense of its size, without loosing the natural light behind us. Not feeling terribly comfortable in caves, especially those like this one where you have to crouch down to go anywhere, I led the retreat back to the open confines of the wadi.

After our short night’s rest and wadi adventure, we felt that a nice relaxing lunch under the shade of a palm plantation was just what we needed. We found a nice spot just down from a small village and plunked ourselves down for lunch and then a short nap.

Feeling more relaxed and ready for the next adventure, we drove to the Al Minitrib, which is the gateway town to Wahiba Sands. Wahiba Sands are reddish dunes that stretch in near parallel North-South lines for 170 kilometres.

The site of Bedouin men leading camels is common across the Wahiba Sands. Camels in Oman are still used for a number of purposes. Camel racing is a big sport in Oman, camel rides are becoming increasingly popular as Oman opens its borders to tourists and camel milk is still popular among Bedouins.

We only went in about 20 kilometres with each of us getting to drive 10km across the sands to the Raha tourist camp (thanks for a unique experience and drive Thierry! Like driving on snow!). There we had the option of several desert experiences, including sand surfing, camel rides, overnight accommodation and quad bikes. Unfortunately we didn't have much time before the sunset, but we still got to try out some quad bikes.

As we waited for the quad bikes to become available, we relaxed and had some tea briefly in a mock-up Bedouin tent.

The quad bikes were rather underpowered for adults, but we were still able to ride roughshod over the lower parts of the dunes.

Then we climbed up the 200 metre high dune - which took much effort - to watch the sunset in front of us and the moon rise behind us.

It was a magical experience to see from high atop the dune, though the wind whipping up the sand did make it slightly difficult at times to keep our eyes fully open. Nevertheless, the sunset was perfect, slowly disappearing behind the dunes in front of our eyes.

With the sun fully set, we ran/leaped/charged down the dune in a blaze of childish glee. It was proper good fun and if the climb up hadn’t been such an almighty struggle, we would have gladly had another go!