Desert Trek

We're back from the desert! What a great, unique adventure it was! As you can tell from the pictures, we did some dune bashing, sand boarding, and camel riding, not to mention a night under the stars. We feel so lucky to be able to be experiencing so many wonderful things in Oman. Not to mention, we've scouted out quite a few spots to take all our visitors :-)

The Al Areesh camp is located on the fringe of the Wahiba Sands desert area. It's just a short 2 hour drive from Muscat. When we arrived, it was around 3 pm, so we sat in the majilis common area to have snacks and water. It was quite hot in the sun and the sand was burning, so we just sat and relaxed. Then it was off to dune bashing!

Driven by two of the brothers of the camp owners, we made our way into the dunes. What a ride. The pictures we included don't really do justice to the massive-ness of the dunes. They do capture the thrill of the ride however. Grace, Nick, and Danny had a great time. I was a little stressed :-) There were several times that I thought our only option was to roll over but, thanks to the skill of the driver, we negotiated 30 degree angles with relative ease. The last hill we went down was the kicker--again, lots of prayers were offered up to Allah!

We had a great dinner under the stars and the kids played hide-and-seek for hours in the dunes. Grace and Nick bunked with their friends outside and Danny, too hot in the hut, took a mattress outside as well. After the rowdy crowd left the dining area, it was a very peaceful and quite cool sleep under the stars.

The kids woke up with the sun to get in another round of sand boarding in their jammies. We had a great breakfast and watched the camels come in to the camp for the rides. While Nick said that he was NOT going to ride the camel, we finally convinced him to try it. So, along with Grace, Nick took a ride on a camel. His biggest complaint was that it was so stinky. As you can see from some of the pictures, Grace bonded with one of the camels that wandered in the camp to graze. She just might be our Dr. Doolittle :-)

All in all, a great trip. Some very interesting and exciting adventures. We're ready to take anyone who'd like to go back to Al Areesh. It was a great time!