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Published: August 7th 2007
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The mighty Jeep
Looking out over the Sana Wadi What an experience.
We have a friend (Simon from Carson Group) over from NZ at the moment. So for that reason, as well as the fact that we have a virgin Jeep Wrangler, we decided to try a bit of wadi bashing. We picked an easy route out of the off road guide, which is also apparently the most spectacular Wadi in the UAE to visit. Its byline is " The Grand Canyon of the Middle East".
However we wouldn't know. The route goes into Oman so you have to take your passports, however my cousin James didn't have his with him as it is away getting a residency visa, but we thought that we would try and blag our way through with a copy of it and his drivers license. Unfortunatly the border guards weren't in the mood for my sweet talking - and we got turned away.
After driving two hours to get there this was a little sad. [Actually the trip to get to the start of the Wadi is another story entirely and involves many wrong turns, re-visiting the same roundabout in Ajman a couple of times, a traffic jam in Sharjah and
The Wadi Bashing Crew
Jeremy, James and Simon general hilarity and confusion. Poor old Simon didn't know what had hit him. ]
However we soon bucked up our thoughts and decided to proceed onwards to another Wadi. This involved driving down into Fujurah. ( Another interesting aside is the fact that we drove through 6 emirates yesterday. Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Um Al Quaim, Ras Al Khaimah and Fujirah. If we had managed to get even more lost and end up in Abu Dhabi we would have driven through every emirate in the country on the same day!_
So at about 3pm yesterday afternoon we finally went off road into Wadi Sana / Sidr. And it was cool. The start of the wadi was really steep, but after a few concerns about whether we would have to get out and push we made it to the top of the hills and started the descent into the wadi proper. At the top of the mountain range there were these really weird holes (4 in a square pattern) in the ground that Project Manager Simon correctly deduced must be foundations for new radio antennas. It did make turning around a little interesting!
The start of the wadi
was really cool, but it soon pettered out into pretty tame driving, especially when it turned into the foundations of the new road that they were building. A wrong turning somewhere in the middle of the valleys meant that we ended up missing most of Wadi Sidr but instead did some of Wadi Amsiyah and then this wadi through us out at the town of Masafi.
They had some markets on just outside of this town and Jeremy decided that this would be an excellent place to try out our bargaining skills. We committed two cardinal sins of bargaining in this town. The first is that we really didn't have a clue of the actual value of the carpets that we were looking at and the second is that we brought from the first and only stall that we looked at. However I have to say that the floor runner that we bought is truley lovely. Iranian silk. And one of the stall holders took a bit of a liking too me, and after an agrument with his partner - who finally capitulated, presented me with a cushion cover that we had also been looking at as a present.
Jeremy Photographing the Goats
We don't really know why this happened, but it just did. We're hoping he wanted to send a photo home to his mum and that it wasn't something else!
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Sandra
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Great reading
I Rochelle it took me about 3/4 hour to read all the news and look at the photos I take it Jeremy is not bothering to keep his website upto date, so will be looking at your's instead. Great reading keep up with the good work, and once again Happy Birthday. Love Sandra.