What a cracking night. Only woken twice. Once by the Omani Environmental Officer driving by on his patrol and then waking to reach out for the blanket because there was a slight chill in the air. When it is so quiet, noise does travel so we heard a faint call to prayer, the
waves crashing some half a mile away and of course a cockerel at dawn. Nothing to ruin our sleep but we are both up before 5am and glad so we are treated to a magnificent start sky. It was good last night but wow the heavens showed us the galaxy this morning. It was to early to grab the large camera so only with eye phone and our memories we take in the heavens.
We listen to the desert wake up laying happy. The cool morning and with the dawn chorus also comes the heat. Happy days.
So if we are up early we can take advantage of the advice of the Omani Conservation Officer and head down to the beach for 7am. We might get lucky and see the last of the leaving turtles. Well we decided to walk and found that we are a mile away even though we could hear the sea.
When we get to the beach we are both amazed at the beauty of natural and discussed by the human impact of PLASTIC.
Though we did not see any actual turtles, they had already made it back to the sea at high tide,
we saw their digging, nest holes and their amazing tracks from the nests back to the sea. Along with them we did see the tracks of the arch enemies of the turtle, the desert fox, the beach lizard, gulls and worse still fishermen. There is one thing worse and that is general humans and waste. Sadly the beach was completely peppers with plastic and general rubbish. You could not look in anyone one direction and not see a plastic bottle. There was plenty of general rubbish, tin cans, fishermen nets, clothing, shoes, glass and detritus, but the prominent material was plastic. We even see plastic bottles in a turtle nest. It breaks my heart and also angers me. Becky and I discuss at great lengths that we need to do something about this, the world needs to do something.
There was life between the rubbish, crabs, birds and we hope more turtles just below the sand, but the already hard battle for the turtle is made harder by the disregard of people that toss their rubbish and plastics without a second thought and it ends up is out sea and on our beaches, impacting on our wild life and ultimately, impacting back on us. With this in mind, Becky and I start forming an idea on how we can help.
We head back to Bruce high up on the cliff top and on arrival our canopy in blown down, it this a sign of things to come? We pack away and then hide in the shade of Bruce the Jeep as we have breakfast. We are astonished that we are diving off and heading back to the he main road by 9:30am.
I left the plan to Becky today. She is super excited and rattles off at me we are going here, here and then here and then there! I nod and do take little notice initially until I realise it is 3 hours
away and I see only a third of the way. We head to a popular wadi call Tiwi and it is teeming with people. A proper tourist magnet for sure and by the time we park, we decide to press on. At this point we punch in the next place into the iOverland and boom 6 hours comes up on the SatNav.
We dig deep and head off. The majority of the drive is in the plains of the mounts. A vast expanse of desert, small
settlements, stunning villas and colourful mosques. We took up regularly for fuel. Not that there seems to be any risk of not finding a fuel station. They are literally ever 15km, if that! At one particular girl stop I spy a young African lad manning a small coffee stop “Hercules Cafe”. It is a drive through and looks fairly smart. Yes please Becky I beg. I think she knows that the planned journey was going to take something special and we meet a great chap that makes a stunning coffee. We particularly life the message on the cup ‘I’ll get the coffee and the world’.
We got to drive through our first sandstorm in Oman today. An orange fog suddenly subsumed everything and we were swallowed up and hoped nothing stopped in
front of us and nothing behind would find us in the dust. All was good and we ploughed our way through the sand. Then as m quick as it appeared, it was gone. The photo does not do it justice!
We were also need to get water. As we are armed with a 15 litre container and so far we have gone through two in four days. This is not bad as we have frank, cooked and even showered twice. We see a ‘sale of water’ shop on the road side and I call in. Note to self – learn the exchange rate as I initially think just 3 Omani riyals is cheap and not until I load up and pull away I realised I’ve been had. 28,5 AED or £6.28. Grrr he saw me coming. Never mind, we are fuelled and have water so we can push on.
Our final destination today was a camp site at Janel Sans called on the ‘on the rim edge’. We knew we were heading into the mountains but this was seriously something. As we started gain elevation, it suddenly become obvious that we were headed to the very summit of the mountains. Just before sunset we are treated to one last quick stop. Across the gorge nestled on the opposite mountain side is an old village. It is just stunning. Photos snapped we go from light to darkness in those few minutes.
Back in Bruce, the road started well even though we lost light quickly the elevation quickly increase and then all of a sudden the paved road stops and we are on a track at best and a track that is on a 16 to 20 degree incline and bends that I take your breath away falling into the black obis. The road continues to climb, passing 2000metres and still climbing. We have some breath in moments when you try and make yourself as thin as possible as a car passes you on the way down. There seem to be a fair few of them – should we be worried?
We take one slight wrong turn, yes seriously on the side of a mountain, in the pitch black and with shear drops. Thanks fully dispute Becky’s distrust of the Garmin Overland, we manage to not go too far and get track on track. We finally hit 2200m and
pass the resort of Jewel Shams and a little further we are on the edge of Al Khitaym. It is dark but we can already see stunning views. It is fairly busy for sure but we stop a space and park up. We I will reduce ourselves to Hussain and Akmed from the UAE. They are just cooking up dinner having sensibly arrived in the day light. Asking that we perch just along from them we are met with smiles and a warm welcome. I think they had pity on us knowing we must have driven up in the dark.
We did our best to find a level spot for Bruce who did a grand job of the mountain, but it looks like he will be nose upwards and we are sleeping on a slight incline, we pop the tent and set up. We finally get chance to sit and take in the views. From the darkness our new mountain neighbours appear with plates of chicken and rice. More Arab generosity which is an obvious theme throughout the Middle East. We chat and then tuck into our super dinner.
The temperature is dropping. We already saw is go blow 30 degrees centigrade and now as we finish our dinner, it is actually low twenties. We feel it and decide to head to bed. I was more tired than I realised as I had been driving for 8 hours and the last hour on the front of my seat and sweaty hands gripped firmly on the steering wheel. It is just typical. We climb in to bed and after enjoying a herd of goats wonder, bleating last the Jeep, the wind suddenly slams into us with a ‘what the hell are we doing at the top of a mountain’ type of strength. It was even stronger than New Years eve which shock us well enough, but this one was a full baton down the hatches and hold on to you hats. We look at each other and we are both thinking do we pack up and go hide somewhere or are we sleeping in the car tonight. I think exhausted we ride the storm and I for one fall asleep. I am not woken again until I get a combination of being actually freezing (not felt that for a long time (right where is the quilt), Becky climbing over me as the cold has obviously need a wee and sadly I have to report – a rather rude and inconsiderate Indian party with kids making a right noise just a stones throw away. It is 2:30am and I often do not understand some people. It is like now else exists or they just don’t care about their rudeness. I wonder why they are letting their kids run around at this time on top of the pitch black mountain, but see they are also the type of group that brings their own football stadium lighting for their camp area. Sad really as they must the unbelievable stats that tonight are horizon the horizon. You can make out the Milky Way and for sure someone turned up the brightness of them. Stunning!
The wind has eased but we are still rattling and the zips make that constant rattle which makes it sound even more ominous when the iKamper is rocked by a gust of wind. Will we survive the night?
Itís hard to find experienced people about this subject, however, you sound like you know what youíre talking about! Thanks