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Published: October 21st 2011
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Now that my good friend Scott has moved out to Dubai, we wanted to take advantage of our location and get exploring some of the countries in the Middle East and it was also a good excuse to get some geocaching done. First on this list was Kuwait and it would be a very quick visit as I only had the weekend to fit it in.
So as with any trip it started with a plane, and this particular plane for some unknown reason even to Jesus himself didn’t have the ability of air conditioning until take off. So for a good 40 minutes I was sitting there sweating my ass off to the amusement of Scott. Anyway a minor speed bump and we were on our way to our destination. After some confusion at the airport over visas we were finally on our way to the hotel taking in the sights, all of which were very similar to the UAE but we weren’t complaining. The next task was trying to direct our taxi driver to the hotel which was very difficult and I had read about the drivers having a very limited knowledge of the area so we ended
up getting him to drop us off at a mall that I knew was nearby to the hotel. After wondering around for a bit we finally walked into a hotel to get directions to ours and we quickly found our bed for the night. It was considerably warmer here than in Dubai but we decided we would explore on foot and headed towards the coastline and our first geocache location. Unfortunately we could not find the cache after about 15-20 minutes of searching so we treated ourselves to the panoramic view of the Kuwait city sky line and then moved on. The next cache was hidden in the parking area for a local cafe which we quickly found and we walked onwards towards the marina in search of sustenance. Re fuelled and ready to go we jumped in a taxi and headed into Kuwait city along the coast with our destination being the Kuwait towers which are some of the largest in the gulf. We went up to the observation deck and got some amazing views of the city at night and we could see the liberation tower in the distance along with some pictures of what the Kuwait towers
looked like after the Iraqi invasion. One picture which was amusing was one of the cafe area of the tower with a brass plaque reading “even the air condition control centre was harmed by the barbaric invaders”. After taking some photos we made our way down to the ground level and went on the hunt for the next cache by the beach. It was quite late in the evening but everyone was out relaxing in the parks/beaches having bbqs and picnics and it was a very chilled out environment, partly as Kuwait has laws against alcohol consumption but it was evident that nobody cared. So onto the cache then and we spent a good while searching for a magnetic hide whilst a family were giving us some funny looks which were all in vain as we never found it. By this time we were a bit disappointed with our lack of caches so we decided to walk back down the road to some giant smurfs we saw in the taxi and get some photos.....Finally we called it a night and jumped in a taxi back to the hotel where another similarity from Dubai was evident...... the crazy roads.
The
next day we had already made the plan to go and visit a museum of the Iraqi invasion so we jumped into a taxi and again he had no clue where to take us, but luckily McDonalds came to the rescue and one of the workers gave us some directions. We were surprised to find that the museum was hidden in the middle of a housing estate a great way away from a taxi rank but luckily the taxi driver offered to wait. However we then found that the museum was closed despite the sign saying otherwise and after taking a few photos and scouting out the area we decided to take a risk and ‘sneak’ into the museum. The museum was actually a house from which Kuwaiti rebels made their last stand against Iraqi soldiers and the house has been left untouched from that day, bullet holes and all. So we took lots of photos and imagined where the rebels were firing from based on the bullet/rocket holes before making sure the area was clear to exit back onto the street. Back to the city and we made our way to the Liberation tower, which was impressive but unfortunately
only opens once a year so no trip to the top was on the cards.
Again we decided to move on foot and walked towards the coast for another geocache right next to the sea. The cache was an easy find and again we took in the sea views and then took a break lying down under the shade of a palm tree watching some fishermen patiently trying to catch some food for the evening. A long walk followed through the city and we passed by a government palace and some armed guards to a local fish market and then onto a mall where we tucked into the food of champions..... A McDonalds McFlurry and a large coke.
Finally we again jumped into a taxi and headed towards a local park and the location for our last cache attempt of the trip. This was one of the most daring hides we have seen as it was placed just behind a sign but was still very much in plain sight. All that was left was to flag down our final over priced taxi and get to the airport. Kuwait had some very nice features and the relaxed environment was very
welcome however from a tourist prospective the time we spent there was more than enough and you can easily see most of the main attractions in a few days. The only thing that we would of liked to do was a visit to the Iraqi border, something maybe to accomplish in the future.
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