New Year's Resolution...

The New Year's Resolution...

And so with the new year, comes the new year's resolution. Ours was to try get outdoors a little more often and to experience more of what the UAE has to offer us.

With that in mind, we went camping in the mountains of Oman, just behind where we live. More of a trial run than an actual camping trip, we noticed that we were a little short of the space that we would have liked to have. Two days later I had a roof-rack fitted to my vehicle to give us the extra space that we needed. And, in true UAE style the installation left a lot to be desired. The attached the roof-rack to the existing runner things on the roof with 4 screw-able pipe clamps...can you imagine? Anyway, they seem to be holding for now.
Camping trip No.2 was a little more adventurous than the first. At the tip of the Arabian Peninsula is an area that fulls under the jurisdiction of the Sultanate of Oman, and not the UAE. This was our destination. With my broken GPS in the shop for repairs, and only my vast knowledge of the UAE landscape to navigate with, we set of on Friday morning into the wide blue yonder...and ended up about 200km away from where I thought I was...lost and alone.
After eventually winding our way through the back mountains of the UAE, we finally made it to Dibba on the East Coast of the UAE, through the border post in Dibba and into the mountains of Oman on the Peninsula tip. By now however it was dark and we had no idea where we were. We decided to stop and camp at our first opportunity and continue through on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning was rather pleasant, seeing the landscape that was dark the night before. We began the drive through the mountains, heading for the border post on the other side that would take us back into the UAE in Ras Al Khaimah in the North of the country.


As you know, not all stories can have a happy ending, and upon reaching the border post at Ras Al Khaimah, we found out that it had been closed due to high rainfall in the UAE. The only thing left to do was drive back from where we had just come. It was beautiful scenery, even if it was a 2 hour drive back. At the end of the trip our poor car had really looked after us well, and earned its place in the family.

Stay tuned for scenes from our next episode...