Khor Fakkan, Part 2

The beauty and freedom of our diving experience came with a price, unfortunately: We had a long day of driving ahead of us on Sunday. We decided to drive down the coast to Khor Kalba, then through the mountains to Hatta, where we’d heard there were some interesting things to see.

The mountains out here are a bit like the surface of the moon. Sparse trees (apparently some of them are frankincense) dot a landscape that is completely desolate. Jagged rocks like dragon teeth jut out of the sand…

...and through this, a winding road takes you through surprisingly new and clean towns that are springing up along the way.

You really feel like you’re the only person out here – especially if, like us, you turn off the main road. Driving along, we met up with a herd of donkeys and, just a few hundred metres later, a herd of very pretty goats.

It’s quite amazing that, for such a small country, the landscape seems to change every few kilometers….. even the sand changes colour! Our drive, which took us from Khor Fakkan to Hatta, through to Madam, to Hayer, towards Sweihan, past Abu Dhabi and back to Madinat Zayed meant that we saw everything from farmland to mountains, to sand dunes (red, orange, yellow, grey – each area has its own sand colour, it seems), and all this in a 600km drive.

Hatta is, like Liwa, a town built around its forts. There are, apparently, cave pools (only accessible by 4x4) and archaeological digs as well to see, but we only had time for a quick stop in at the Heritage Village (it does seem like every single town here has its own Heritage Village), which had been modified with added (false) walls for some sort of a TV show. We didn’t see anything much happening but, as it was the middle of the (hot) afternoon, no sane person was wandering around outside.

We, being insane, walked up to one of the restored towers where we could truly appreciate the area and stood there enjoying the eagle eye view we had of the neighbouring farms.

On then, through a tiny bit of Oman (where I, being silly said, “Let’s stop at the next roadside shack selling clay pots”, without realizing that it was the last one, and so ended up not feeding my need for pottery things to stack in corners and/or be smashed by the cats), and on through a sandy desert, where one may wish to rent one of these charming homes.

I suppose that if you want to live in a roof-less cinder block shack in the middle of nowhere, you can just call that number – remember the country code for the UAE is 971.

Too much construction and too many highway detours made for a longer drive than usual, but we found that people were super friendly and ready to give us directions in perfect English (How is it that some Indian guy in a ramshackle grocery store in the middle of a desert village can speak better English than just about any other place in the world?), as we wound our way back home.

In another two weeks, we will be arriving in Canada and, inshallah, enjoying a few more roadtrips, albeit with slightly different scenery! And, speaking of Canada – Happy Canada Day!!! I boiled up some maple syrup and made some experimental maple candies to celebrate. As almost the only Canadian out here, though, there will be no party, really, this year.

Khor Fakkan, Part 1

In celebration of 6 months of wedded bliss, we decided to take a mini-break weekend and finally go scuba diving in Khor Fakkan.

Khor Fakkan should be the name of a heavy metal band – I mean, just try saying it in a deep spooky voice while smashing a guitar – but it’s actually a small coastal city on the Gulf of Oman. We’d driven through it in January, and had pretty much decided then that it deserved a closer look.

Judging from the map, it seemed like the easiest way to get to KF was to drive through a sliver of Oman. We figured, incorrectly, that all we’d have to do would be to wave our passports at the border guards and drive on through. And we did drive through a bit of Oman (quite a lovely place, actually), until the expense of having to get a visa and extra car insurance sent us back to the UAE to drive through some rather twisty mountain roads at night.

Our first day of diving started easily with a bit of lazing around on the white sandy beach and a quick dip in the crystal blue water (I think we’ll eventually get tired of our beach hotels…) before getting ourselves kitted out. Once we had our equipment, we hopped on the boat and sped out to our first dive site, Martini Rock, which we were told would be like “swimming in an aquarium”. Just having survived some of the worst red tides in recent history, the oceanic ecosystem around the Gulf of Oman is just starting to bounce back again.

pics from the hotel beach - the pointy rock in the distance of the 1st photo is Shark Island

It was great to be diving – For the record, I’ve decided that I can only dive in tropical oceans, when surrounded by pretty fishies – and with an excellent dive club (Divers Down) that was staffed by professional, efficient and super friendly people. So, yeah, highly recommended and we’ll definitely be going with them again.

For the first time ever, we were allowed to go off on our own, instead of following a Dive Master around. This was a big first for both of us, and such a lovely way to dive. Suddenly, you become aware of exactly where you are and how you need to navigate; you get more responsible with checking your air, and communicating with your buddy to decide which way to go, and whether plans made above the surface need to change or not. Martini Rock is great because you basically swim around a central rock formation, looking in crevices for little cuttlefish, boxfish, big puffer fish and a whole host of others, like snappers, triggerfish, and a few eels.

The next dive, to Shark Island (Yes, there are sharks that pass by here, but no sharks at this time of year), brought us a new adventure as we had to navigate for ourselves into very shallow water (only about 2 m deep at some points – strange to be that close to the surface) and be picked up by the boat. We kept our eyes open for turtles, but were out of luck, instead finding a patch of hard coral, where we saw a few clownfish amongst the anemones growing there.

We had enough time for a snack before heading back for our NIGHT DIVE. I’ve had chances to do night dives before but had never felt comfortable enough. It’s a bit daunting, isn’t it? There’s the whole being-under-the-water thing, which is enough to freak most people out…. And then there’s the plunge-into-darkness, what-if-the-leviathan-comes-and-eats-me thing.

Luckily, we had a guide for this dive. Paul, one of the owners, was coming down with us to guide us around the wreck (ooooh, did I mention that it was a NIGHT DIVE on a WRECK?). He was great… very calm and clear and reassuring, and helped to make what could have been a scary experience into something absolutely magical.

Once we’d gotten to the bottom, we knelt in the sand and Paul signaled to us to shut off our flashlights. Now, we were 20 m down, in the dark, next to the algae-covered hull of a boat, and it was DARK…

As our eyes were adjusting to the pitch black surrounding us, Paul started moving his hands about. Phosphorescence swirled from his fingertips, and from ours as we joined in. Underwater phosphorescence is almost indescribable. Small glowing balls – like fireflies – swirl away from your fingers, hair, air bubbles, and float up. It’s quite amazing.

Suddenly, our spooky trip in the dark had become a sort of private fairy land.

We spent the next 20 minutes or so exploring over the wreck, with Ty following Paul through a hatchway at one point. There was so much sealife (I had been expecting sleeping fishies with little pillows), like crabs decorated up like birthday cakes, several green and blue eels, a big puffer fish, and a cuttlefish catching his supper (a thing shot out from his tentacles – it was like being on National Geographic or something).

Going back to the surface gave us more time to play with the phorphorescence as we jiggled the rope, swished our fins or snapped our fingers to make the little glowy specks dance.

The next day we had two more dives. The first was a return to Martini Rock, but this time with a strong current that we had to swim against. All the fish had schooled around the rock in a big clump, facing the current. They really just looked like those fish in Finding Nemo that make big arrows and stuff. It was tough going sometimes, and we came out of the water feeling a bit tired, but once again happy with all that we’d seen.

Our final dive was a murky plunge into the area known as Hole in the Wall. It’s so named because of a short open ended cavern that you can swim through – if you are brave enough. I wasn’t, and instead I went up over the top, where I could see everyone’s air bubbles coming up through the cracks in the rock. Ty went through, and ended up stabbing himself on one of the numerous urchins (it was a very urchiny dive). As we swam along through narrow passages between the rock formations, I spotted a few neat fish, including a stonefish (that I wasn’t allowed to hug, even though he looked very sad), a few more boxfish and one big silver guy who came out of nowhere, then disappeared.

I’m going to post this now, and write the rest (our drive back was pretty cool too) tomorrow….