Jacqui and Richard Abroad: Thursday, May 7th

We have company again!! Nicolas arrived last Friday morning, after having the final leg of his flight delayed by about 5 hours. Jacqui and I were in a "set the alarm, go to bed, get up, check the web site, set the alarm again and go back to bed" mode a few times. He was supposed to arrive at 11 pm Thursday, then 1am, 2:15, 2:45 and finally 3:50. He finally made it, but his bag didn't! It arrived on Friday around noon.

We didn't do much on Friday: went for lunch, drove around a bit to show him the area and went out for dinner. Saturday, we drove to Nakhal (about 90 minutes away) to visit an old fort and their hot springs. The fort was pretty amazing as it is built mostly around a big rock; it offers some very nice views of the Batinah plains below. The hot spring was kind of neat to see as well as the hot water is coming out from the side wall of the wadi and flows into a small river. We walked in the river for a bit, sometimes stopping to let the little minnows peck at our feet. We came back and had dinner, then Nic called it a day.

Sunday and Monday were quiet days: we had to work and Nic rested. We would go out at night for dinner but that's it. He went for a walk on Monday and found the temperature a little hot (about 40 degrees). We did a sunset cruise at night; however it was cloudy and we couldn't see the sun set! It's almost never cloudy in Muscat, but the view from the water was very nice as we got to see things from a different perspective. On Tuesday, I took the day off and we drove to Wadi Shab and the sinkhole that is along the way. It was again pretty hot for a walk in the wadi, but we went for a swim as we got to the third and final pond and it helped to cool things off a bit! Nic did manage to swim to the end of that pond, where you have a cave - the opening above water to get in it is only large enough for your head in some spots - that has a waterfall coming from the wall off the rocks. He found that pretty cool. We went to the souk that evening; it was very pleasant as temperatures cooled down a bit and it was a full moon.

On Wednesday, he went with Jacqui (who came down with a sudden case of indigestion for the day!) to the dive center and took a lesson and did his first scuba dive. He really enjoyed it.

Thursday, we met after work at the airport and flew to Dubai for the weekend. His stay in Muscat was very pleasant, and it was nice that he could see where we live and what we do.