Khasab Hotel

... seasonally move from housing, even entire villages; sort of a semi-nomadic twist.<br><br>When we were paying the entrance fees for the fort we asked for directions to hire a boat, and the man not only gave us directions, but called a friend of his who ran a boat service, who then came to chat with hubby about hiring a boat to take us around the "fjords". They settled on a price, and we followed the friend to a small harbor where we boarded a ...

... and I didn&#8217;t know if I would need/want them, but they were only $5-6 so I got them anyway. A few other groups arrived---a German couple and a family that I later determined to be Russian (sounded Eastern European and I heard some &#8220;nyet&#8217;s&#8221;). While we waited to take off, there was water, tea, coffee, and soda. I had a water to start, but it tasted awful. I never knew bottled water could taste bad---was either the taste of plastic or just ...

... I could tell the water wasn&#8217;t going to be "cooling me off" so I didn&#8217;t spend all that much time in it---felt good to swim though. It was about1PM and I knew I wasn&#8217;t going to be making the 1:30PM tour (I had planned on catching one tomorrow morning anyway), so I decided to catch some more sun for a while (better not come back from the Middle East pale!). I laid there, rotating every 15 minutes just to be safe and took one more swim&#8212;total of ...

... What a start for this year by starting this trip on the early morning of Jan 1st 2009. The night before was new years night and the kids didn't want to sleep to celebrate at mid-night despite knowing that they would have to leave very early in the morning. John and his son Zak couldn't make it to our place for over night due to fog, now they'll have to travel an extra two hours to catch up with us early. Sohail, Nabeel and their families would ...

... a bit tricky. They were a German couple, he of rather large proportions, and both of them puffed furiously on cigarettes to get a lasting hit of nicotine as the driver did the paperwork. The Scotch &amp; French travellers hopped in what our kids used to call the "back back", the cargo area of the 4 wheel drive with extra seats, the German lady came in the back with us, and by necessity of his size, the German man sat in ...

... crowd. Where were all these people going? This is usually a very quiet border crossing? It was the Eid holiday, but still...this was CRAZY!!! Us girls pulled the woman's advantage (we could not be amongst all those men rubbing up against us) and after a bit of begging and persistence we managed to get all 25 passports stamped at the side door (although immigration were reluctant to do so, it did not ...

... ride. Just a hundred meters before the top of the mountain, the road was blocked, probably because we were somewhat close to the border with Ras Al Khayma emirate. Not knowing how far we were from the campground, we laid the mattresses there, and had a beautiful sleep in a comfortable cool air. In the morning we woke up as a few wasps were buzzing around, and we decided to get up when one of them tried to sneak into Graham's mouth. Minutes later, there were dozens of these huge wasps ...

... these temperatures, a few degrees difference is very appreciable! Eventually we managed to gather, and reach our two boats. Boarding was a matter of minutes, and off we went along the coast, towards the fjords. We were already amid the mountains, which were abruptly plunging into the Gulf waters. On our way out, in the afternoon, we crossed the other tourist boats, which were heading back. When we reached telegraph ...

... t a nice expereince. Although you know that you have nothing illegal on you you start to worry anyway. Like what if someone hid something in your bag etc. They wouldn't care, it would be straight to prison for a long long time. <br><br>In the end we only stayed one night as our minds were set on getting home and starting to build our life again. Maybe we will come back to Dubai on holdiay in the future when we look respectable.

This was our third trip to the Mussandam since moving to Dubai. A very civilised start to the weekend was the initial meeting spot of Starbucks at Uptown Mirdif. The 12 intrepid campers arrived in their various 4WD vehicles ready for a ruggid weekend's camping.........after a grande latte and blueberry muffin that is.... We hit the road at 9am in convoy along the Emirates Road reaching Ras Al Khaimah for a refuelling stop ...