Our First Wadi Adventure

When Danny told me the day before my birthday that he hadn't gotten me anything I said, "That's okay, let's DO something instead." (Well, I wouldn't have minded a little present :-)

Anyway, we decided to take a day trip to a place called Wadi Shab, which is about a 1 1/2 hour drive south from Muscat. We consulted 3 guide books, one called "Offroad Oman," which said that Wadi Shab was the most beautiful, accessible one to go to. Each one also said that the hike was an easy, 45 minute to 1 hour trip, with a very clear path.

What we started to realize on our drive, though, was that the books were a little out-dated. First of all there was a brand new highway that opened up in 2007, which was just a dotted line in most of the books. That was our first clue. Our next came when we started out on the hike along the dried up river bed. The books said there was a concrete path laid out to show the way to the swimming hole. While there were still parts of that path in tact, there was a great bit of the path destroyed. That meant for some pretty creative boulder climbing, all done quite courageously by the children. The kids were great, actually. They loved looking for the path and climbing pretty big rocks to find it. At one point I remember thinking that if this was an easy hike, I better not try the medium ones. (I was reassured later that because of a hurricane that hit a couple of years ago, the wadi had changed pretty dramatically. Whew. I know I was a year older, but come on!)

Long story short, after about an hour of a pretty rigorous hiking, we came upon a beautiful swimming hole. The kids quickly jumped in to the pretty cold water and all was good! There were several other groups out there at the time, so we all just jumped in and swam around. We were told by some frequent visitors that there was a cave not to far away--one which you had to swim, then walk, then swim, then walk, then swim again until you found it. When you're swimming for the last segment, you look ahead and see a tiny crack of rock. You swim through it kind of sideways, holding on to the edges of the rock for about 2 meters and then it opens to this beautiful cave with a waterfall. The water is very deep and, because there's just a little bit of light, it's a beautiful emerald green. I wish we had had a water-proof camera to capture the sight. You'll just have to come visit us to believe it :-)

After the swim, we headed back, trying to stick to the path a little better. Luckily, we were behind some folks who had clearly been there before, so we tried to walk a little faster to keep up with them. We reached our car without too much trouble, changed our damp clothes and headed home.

You won't be surprised to know that Grace and Nick took this adventure as an orienteering challenge, often going a little ahead of me and Amelia to scout out the path. Once, they and Danny ran into a donkey who was tied up, but angry nevertheless that they had come so close. His warning cry echoed through the whole riverbed and scared the pants of me. Ah, all part of the adventure.

Well, I know this was way too long a narrative, but I hope if makes up for our scarce posts these past few weeks. We're back to exploring and will keep you posted more often.

Here are some pictures of our great trip. (There are explanations of most of the pictures if you click on the caption button at the bottom of the screen.)