Touristy things

Lots of stuff has been going on lately. I've been insanely busy and often wonder how I would have time to fit in a job if I could manage to find myself one.

Last week my brother in law came for his first visit to Oman, and he really enjoyed himself.

He didn't have a lot of time to spend in Oman before we went to Dubai for 5 days for the Dubai 7's so we had to cram the-best-of-Oman-highlights-tour into 3 days.

Ok it was not possible, we did manage some stuff with the jet lag sleep ins, the Queen's visit and road closures, me having car problems and having to get it fixed again (!) and Cush being very busy at work setting us back.

Nakhal Fort unfortunatly took a whole day because, well, I got lost. I had only been to Nakhal Fort once with Cush maybe 2 years ago and all I could remember was that it was in the middle of a thousand palm trees and on a hill.

I checked out the map and saw that the way to Nakhal was to go to Barka roundabout and turn left and then just drive down that road.

I checked on the Ministry of Tourism website but there were no directions there. I checked in the Oman Residence Guide but no directions there either.

I decided that we would just head out anyway because how hard could it be to find, Nakhal Fort is huge!


Besides, the Ministry of Tourism has been adding brown signs to sides of roads advertising tourist destinations so I figured it would be no problem...so of course having my luck, it was a problem.

As we drove to Nakhal I saw a brown road sign for a fort pointing in on the right hand side. I didn't catch the name of the fort but it didn't say "Nakhal" but I figured maybe the name on the sign was the proper Arabic name. Wrong again.

We ended up at some random fort that hadn't even been restored. It was covered in lizzards and there was even a dead bird up in a tower.

I drove around for about an hour and a half before Cush texted to see how we were getting on. I texted back to say we couldn't find it, Cush texted again to say that all he remembered was that it was on the left hand side of the road.

Sure enough it was on the left side of the road, and there was no handy brown sign pointing us in the right direction.

We did our tour and my brother in law really enjoyed himself, and he didn't seem to mind that I drove us around lost for a few hours up and down the same 3 or 4 streets in the village on the other side of the road, saying over and over, "I know it's around here somewhere. There really is a fort. I've been there before!"

The next day we went to wadi Shab and the sink hole with Cush and we had a lot of fun.

For those who don't know wadi Shab is a really cool wadi that you hike up and then at the end you swim under a rock through a cave and into an cavern that is half full of water and really fun to swim in...apparently.

I'm not a fan of swimming in untreated water and creepy crawlies and stuff so I stayed out and read a book while Cush and Brother-in-law swam.

Then we went to the sink hole and had a bbq. While we were there some random guy walked up and asked us for food. It wasn't cooked yet so we said come back in 20 minutes but he just stood there.

After about 10 minutes of him just standing there he finally lost interest and went away but then he didn't back for the food we had set aside for him. So wierd.

The next day we had planned to go to the Grand Mosque (Cush and I have never been) but time got away from us and we headed off to Dubai.

In between all this we did manage to go to the souk although it was so late by the time we got there that all the shops had closed, and we did the drive from the souk around old Muscat to the Sultan's palace and then through and up to Ruwi and back.

Oman really is a neat place to take people around, I always forget that because I live here and we don't do the touristy things anymore but I always enjoy myself.

Next week is the Bryan Adams concert and I'm super excited! I seriously can't wait.

Also next week, my in laws are coming for a visit and I'm feeling a bit of stress about it to be honest. We don't necessarily get along very well so we'll see how that goes!