Half term was early for us here in Oman so that it coincided with a 9 day public holiday for Eid al Adha. Eid al Adha is the Muslim celebration which marks the end of the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj).
As newbies in Muscat we are still getting to know people so we were delighted when one of our neighbours invited us on a 2 night surfing trip to the East of Oman. We had already booked a trip to Salalah 1100 km from Muscat in the South of Oman for part of the week (post to follow) but not wanting to miss out, we decided to go along for one night and were so glad we did.
The Arabian Sea Motel near As Siwayh was the location, a low rise, basic but clean hotel situated in a huge bay. The surfing was provided by a company from Dubai (http://www.surfshopdubai.com) who regularly visit this spot to provide water sports facilities including surfing, kite boarding and stand up paddle boarding.
We drove 3.5 hours from Muscat to get there in convoy with a few other families, through some very dramatic mountain scenery, past wadis we would like to visit, through the fishing town of Sur and past the turtle reserve at Ras al Jinz.
The first surfing lessons and boards had been pre-booked for the kids, once again thanks to our lovely neighbour, and the first lesson took place on the afternoon of our arrival. There were 13 kids with mixed abilities but this was a new experience for my girls and I thought my little miss sporty (the youngest) would find it easier than her less active big sister but it seems that this is not always the case with surfing and our teenager in the making was every bit as capable as her little sister, a great confidence booster.
The first surfing lessons and boards had been pre-booked for the kids, once again thanks to our lovely neighbour, and the first lesson took place on the afternoon of our arrival. There were 13 kids with mixed abilities but this was a new experience for my girls and I thought my little miss sporty (the youngest) would find it easier than her less active big sister but it seems that this is not always the case with surfing and our teenager in the making was every bit as capable as her little sister, a great confidence booster.
The surfing guys were excellent with the kids and really encouraged all of them to have a go and by day two had pretty much all of them standing up. This was all being watched from the beach by the gang of parents, whilst also admiring the skills of the kite boarders and an amazingly cool stand up paddle boarder who made the whole thing look sooo easy and even made me want to get up and have a go myself.
The hotel served up a good breakfast but breakfast is the only meal that is offered so we had all arrived with cars full of BBQs, camping chairs and cool boxes full of food to share. The evening was spent BBQ-ing, marsh mellow toasting (kids), beer drinking (adults) and chatting to the group of great people we had met, most of them for the first time that day. The kids all had a ball and exhausted from the days activities and went to bed without any complaints at all. :-)
Unfortunately we had to leave before the mum's surfing lesson took place on the afternoon of the 2nd day, which was such a shame as I would have really liked to have given it a go and have since heard that it was a lot of fun!
We did however somehow manage to bring home an extra guest homw with us though...Ahhhh!!!
Some people have lived here for years and never seen a scorpion so how we managed to find one and bring it home goodness knows. I think it was a bit shell shocked from all the screaming but we managed to catch it and deliver it safely back to the desert .
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