Saturday, January 31st - Wadi Shab

Today, we decided to drive out to Wadi Shab, located about 180 km from Muscat. A wadi is a river bed and Shab is the name of the location. Once you get there, you take a short boat ride to cross a little lake to get the to trail leading to the wadi. The walk is basically in a ravine, bordered by cliffs and mountains on both sides. We walked a bit then stopped for a picnic in a nice place in the shade. The total walk, one way, took a little more than one hour. Every step we took allowed us to discover something more amazing as we went along. We walked by two pools of water but the goal is to get to the third one, which is bigger than the first two and which leads to a cavern that has a waterfall, as long as you swim to it - which we didn't do, but the whole experience of visiting the wadi was really cool. Below are pictures from our walk.

Crossing the small lake to get to the trail

Nice wide trail, at the start of the journey

Our picnic spot, by an old falaj

A falaj at the wadi

Friday, January 30th - Visit to Mutrah

We didn't have our usual Friday - no breakfast or walk by the beach. Instead, we took a drive to find out how to get to the golf course that we are playing on on Sunday. It looked pretty simple, and we got to the right area in about 15 minutes. We could see it from the road above, but we couldn't see a road to get there. That took another 25 minutes. And this is why, when you have to get to a place at a certain time in the Middle East, you might as well check it out first! It turned out that you had to go by the golf course (going west on the highway) then take the next exit and then come back east on the same highway, knowing that the exit for the golf course is in the exit to the highway! Of course!!!
 But we found it and were very happy about it!

We then drove down to Marina Bander for lunch - it is the place where we should have taken our sailing lessons had the weather been decent. They have a nice restaurant and the area is very scenic. So we had lunch and walked around in a park then drove to Mutrah (the old Muscat) where we walked around for a while. It was very nice as we got to see some old fortified towers and walked along the waterfront.

It has been a very good start to a long weekend.

Thursday, January 29th - the start of a 4 day weekend!!!

Our second week of exams is over. Jacqui had students every day until noon, while I had exams every day up to Tuesday (as Sunday was a national holiday - a mourning day for the death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia). We spent all week marking exams and preparing for the second semester; I could have used the extra day as I only started working on my own classes on Thursday at 2 pm! However, Jacqui was ready to move on as she didn't have much to do in her afternoons.

Unlike last year, where we felt we had to travel every time we had a break, we are staying put for the next four days. We have a few things planned, but we don't feel the need to get away from Oman to fulfill those needs. We are very much looking forward to this four day break, as the Christmas holidays were pretty hectic, and there wasn't much time between getting back here and going full tilt again! These next few days will be very nice as it will give us a chance to relax and catch our breath a bit. We started our long long weekend on Thurday afternoon by the pool at the Crowne Plaza, and then by going out for dinner; our first time in over a week - what a difference this liquor licence makes!

Below are pictures of birds that we see from our apartment window - normally in the morning. Note: the hummingbirds are not there every day and are had to shoot as they move around so fast!

Hummingbird at top of a tree - by our flat

same hummingbird - upside down