Sunday 1st May 2022
After the disappointment of not having the trailer ready to take we decided to take the plunge and what we have been calling already as the ‘contingency’ or commonly called the iKamper, well why not, we have it stuck on top of Bruce.
We were not totally prepared for this to be honest as we have put much of our gear in the trailer ready, so grabbing a few bits before we said Eid Murbarak to the Icon Team and our beloved trailer, we headed off to the Oman Border.
As we always do, we over thought the journey, spending far too much time planning, researching and creating journey plans. This, like most good plans, goes to a ball of chalk with first contact with the enemy or first step. Ha, ours was not going well with the trailer and now the route was out the window, what next? Sod it, threw stuff in the back of the Jeep and go for it, which we did.
We decided to drive straight to Muscat and undertake the first international land border crossing for 247 Overland at Hatta.
Not too long a drive from Dubai, about one and half hours, but the sat nav decided to take us a completely new way to the way we normally go.
Pleased to see the amazing mosque at the junction to Hatta, it always blows us away., we soon found ourselves creeping along the rather quiet road to the first of many border gates. That will be 70aed for the pleasure of leaving the UAE please. Then the next gate – stamp, stamp go passports and the first of several bits of paper, the guard suddenly says “visa, you want a visa, day, week, month, you tourist?” We sit confused and say politely back “no, no, thank you we are residents of the UAE, here is our residency card, he looks at us with a rather sinister smile to be frank and says “no you need a visa, you come around the back and get one, you not have a e-visa”. At this point he must have seen the rather untrusting and annoyed face of over organised Becky, so he quickly says “you just drive, park around corner, go into building and get visa thank you”, looking more sheepish and less corrupt border guard or that just could of been us, having read too many horror stories of bribes and dodgy border crossings from Overlanders.
We drive a little further on and park up with a number of other cars, head into a large building and find eight or so cubicles in the centre of the large room with border guards in and queues that are formed with little or no methodology or reasoning. Quick pick one Darren, and just like the supermarket, we sure will pick the wrong one, the slowest, the one that has the problem customers ahead of us and of course, the chap serving goes on break or closes just before we get served.
What we did notice was savvy couples and families, spreading their chances and queuing in multiple queues. We had a group of young lads ahead of us that looked like a football team, they were doing so well until they had to present car insurance.
We spoke to a family with a Brazilian wife and Lebanese husband that had two young children heading back to Oman to see friends. They had lived there for 8 years with a total of 16 across the Gulf region UAE, Bahrain and Saudi. Then we struck up conversation with a nice fella wearing a ‘Worlds Best Dad’ tshirt.
He had a hand full of passports and a tribe of young daughters, but he was super friendly and a beaming smile, and not surprised as his youngest daughter makes a love heart shape with their hands together.
We finally stand in front of the visa boarder guard. He seems plenty cheerful all things said and presenting our passports, health insurance and IDs, he has processed and stamped us entry. He does ask us one tricky question, “where you staying in Oman?” Ah good one, we could have presented the route plan we produced but that has already failed on day one, so we just blurt out, “Muscat, we will camp on top of our Jeep on the beach”. He smiles and says he has given us two weeks visa. Then he asks us for our car details and insurance. Not a problem, I slide over my cards and insurance, plus the infamous yellow card from the insurance company. All present and correct and we will not be following the young football team to the insurance queues for border fails, but I did not see him slide a small slip of paper into our plastic folder with the insurance. We head out to the Jeep, with a spring in out step, even if it took a hour and a half, to then head over to the car inspection gate. As we draw up to the gate we see the car in front hand a slip of paper to the guard. That odd we note, must be an Omani and different to us, nope, the guard smiles at us and asks us for the slip of paper. What slip of paper?! Well, Becky was fuming having to queue for a visa when we did not think we needed one, but now I am fuming as we had to u-turn back to the visa building. I just walked straight to the front of the queue politely apologising to all and stated to guard “you forgot to give us a slip of paper”. To be honest I had no idea what slip of paper I am talking about. He politely retorts saying “no I gave you one”, I dumbly hold out my folder and paper work stating I’ve looked and nothing. Without too much of a fuss he checks his computer and prints another, thankfully. As I climb back in Bruce and tell Becky that he claims to have printed and given us one all ready, we check and hell yes, he did – slightly embarrassed now, we head to the car inspection gate and smile as we hand just one of our two slips. At this point though we fully expect a full car search, we saw two cars searched before us and we have a Jeep full of stuff. Thankfully no dates and more importantly, alcohol, but we just get waved through with a nice smile.
This is not the end though to the border crossing. We have two more gates to pass through and have our paperwork checked, but nearly two hours from the approach road from Hatta, we are officially through and in Oman. We are excited and relieved.
Then the oddest thing, after pointing out that the geology of the rocks in Oman looks different to the UAE, Becky states they look like piles of poo, not the most flattering description less than five minutes into a new country, but they sort of do and this all happens as we pass a pick up with a cow in the back. We push on and head toward our first night stop, we chose our replan, Ras Al Sawadi Beach.