Masirah Island and Merry Christmas

" I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end".

- Margaret Thatcher (1925 -)


Our last blog entry was all about our friend Tish and his visit to Oman. Unfortunately, Tish left at the beginning of a long holiday weekend. His flight departed at the pleasant hour of 4am and sleep deprived and weary we left at 7:30am for a camping trip. Wise planning.

We headed, with our good friends Lucas and Tennielle, for Oman’s largest island – Masirah. We had heard that getting to the ferry crossing at the earliest possible time was vital. We did not heed that advice and decided we were waaayyy to wise for these words. Five hours of driving later and we arrived at the “ferry crossing”. The scene was filled with piles of cars all vying for the opening that allegedly lead to a future boat. Having just missed a boat we began asking around about the ferry, etc. The predictable flurry of contradicting answers ensued with all having one thing in common – “tide going out, no good. Next ferry, than 7pm (dark).” Uh oh. So as the next floating collection of metal parts chugged into the “terminal” we got into our cars and joined the massive game of chicken. Forcing our way towards our rightful place in line we arrived at the loading point only to see all the cars had filled the deck. The deckhands all waved us on, and with swirling hands and wobbling heads convinced us to contort our car onto the rear loading flap. We grabbed anything we valued out of the car as they placed wood boards around
our wheels and raised the flap, lifting our car to a 45 degree angle. One wise gentleman kindly leaned his head into my window and said, “handbrake”. Yeah buddy, I got that.

Arriving on the other side we drove around the sparsely populated island and found a place to camp on the southern end. The scene is other-worldy. The middle of the island is piled with Hershey Kiss shaped hills, followed by gravel desert leading to the white sand beaches that ring the island. Vegetation was extremely limited and there was very little protection from the elements. The days were spent swimming in the crystal clear waters searching for the turtles that had dug holes on the beach the night before and watching herds camels feeding together. The nights were not as relaxing as they were spent holding our tents down from the winds that were tearing them from their supports.

We departed to a similar ferry scene taking the expected one hour and forty-five minutes to cross the 9km straight. Next time we’ll bring our own oars.


Christmas:

As you might imagine for a pair of Canadians celebrating Christmas in 30 degree heat is not the norm. For whatever Oman lacks in “festive spirit” we’ve been attempting to add our own as we decorate our 3 foot tree, download Christmas movies and I moonlight as Santa (I can’t lie about that one, Tina has pictures). We will be away for Christmas and are very excited for our trip.

We will be in Jordan and Syria for three weeks. We will be spending Dec 24th travelling on camels through Wadi Rum (Lawrence of Arabia) and staying in a Bedouin camp that night. Christmas morning we will ride the camels back and then head to Petra that evening. We are hoping to have Christmas dinner at the foot of the Petra site. We will fill you in on the rest when we return.

As excited as we are for our Christmas, we will greatly miss our family and friends this season. We wish you all the very best over the holidays.

Merry Christmas.