It seems like a lot of my posts have just been about our travels, recently, but I'm going to try to post more about day-to-day life in Abu Dhabi, too. First, however, I need to talk about this awesome road trip we took over Spring Break.
Wait, what? Road trip, you say? Didn't you say you weren't gonna own a car?
Yes, we had originally intended to live like city folk and not have a car while we were here. Honestly, our taxi system was working just fine - and reasonably cheaply too - but we both sort of missed the freedom that comes from having your own method of transportation, and being able to go where you wanted when you wanted (you can do this with cabs, too, but there's always the "is there going to be a cab waiting or do I have to call?" aspect). Also, it's nice to have someone driving who doesn't treat every trip like they're qualifying for the next F1 race, which is very much a cabbie thing around here. Usually my motion sickness is triggered by only boat trips, wild theme park rides, etc - but riding around with some of these guys has made me positively green at times. Fortunately, Jon not only likes to drive, he's a sight better at it.
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| Meet Kaylee. |
So now we have the wheels. Originally for SB I had this magnificent trip to Jordan and Petra planned, but right around the time I started looking into booking, Jordan got involved in certain regional conflicts and that made us slightly more nervous about traveling there. It would seem it's not just us, because I've seen more tourism ads for Jordan lately than anywhere else - they must really be hurting in that department. We figured maybe it wasn't close to travel there so soon after the events, so we decided to put Jordan off for another time. I will get there and to Petra before we leave this region, though. I mean, I'd likely never return just for that purpose.
After Jordan plans fell through, we had to do a bit more quick thinking. We talked about going to Turkey, but weren't jazzed too much about flying I think; we're flying next week to Toulouse for a conference for Jon, and it would've put the trips too close together. So we (I) decided we'd put our newfound freedom to the test and take Kaylee out for a 6 day, 5 night road trip through the region (namely, Al Ain and Oman). I borrowed a guidebook and a map (plus travel itinerary ideas) from my good friend Lise, and buckled down to work out the logistics.
I'd been to Al Ain once before on a Community Life trip to the zoo (the post for which is forthcoming, lost somewhere in my backlog), and instantly fell in love with the city and the scenery. I've been trying to convince Jon to go back ever since. So the plan was to hit the road on Wed, meandering to Al Ain at our own pace, and then staying at the hotel that night atop Jebel Hafeet - the UAE's second highest named peak, but the only one that is accessible. From there, we would travel into Oman, spending one night in Nizwa and two in Muscat. From Muscat, we would take the fast travel ferry (that also takes cars!) up to the Musandam Peninsula to Khasab, where we'd stay another night. After Khasab we'd come back to the Emirates and spend a night in Ras al Khaimah on the beach, rather than Dubai - neither of us were really excited about driving or staying in the city.
We hired a great pet sitter to look after Lord Baelish, and took off Wed morning. Almost immediately, we ran into fun times.
Jon had printed off directions from Google about how to get to Al Ain. I wasn't sure we needed them, as I was fairly certain I could manage to navigate us there myself, and because I have unlimited data in the UAE I could just use my phone as a GPS. I figured it was a good idea to have a backup, though. Trusting the printout, I didn't use my phone. Classic road trip mistake number one. Somehow we got turned around at an exit somewhere, and wound up taking E11 in the WRONG DIRECTION. It wasn't until we'd been on the road an hour or so that we realized, we were heading towards Dubai. At this point, I couldn't reroute my GPS because I didn't have any signal, and we had no idea where we'd gotten lost at...so we stopped and bought a map. An actual, physical map. When was the last time anyone used one of those? Turns out we bobbed when we should've weaved, metaphorically speaking, so we turned around and an hour later were on the right road to Al Ain.
Al Ain is the second largest city in the Abu Dhabi Emirate (the first being...Abu Dhabi) and the fourth largest in the UAE. It was the birthplace of the UAE's first President, and is centered around an oasis. Thanks to the oasis, it's sometimes called the Garden City, and for good reason - Al Ain is truly a change of pace from the usual scenery around here. A breath of fresh air, or life, if you will. Jon and I sat down the night before and picked out what sorts of things we wanted to see in Al Ain, and once we arrived in the city, headed off to visit them. Wanting to skip the overt tourist traps, we decided on Al Jahili Fort and the Al Ain National Museum.
Al Jahili Fort is a reconstruction of a fort built in the late 1800s, as a royal summer residence and also general Fort for Sheikh Zayed the First. Today it serves as a lankmark and a home for an exhibition on Wilfred Thesiger, a British explorer and writer who penned Arabian Sands, a travel narrative about his crossing of the Empty Quarter and the mountains of Oman.
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| Al Jahili Fort |
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| Interior shot |
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| Watchtower |
After the fort, we maneuvered through Al Ain City to the National Museum using my excellent skills as expert navigator - which is to say, we got there eventually with some creative estimation and driving. For a place that was the equivalent of like, 6 city blocks over, it sure was incredibly hard to find. The National Museum is the oldest in the UAE, built by Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nayhan (the man instrumental in the formation of the UAE and also its first president - the grandson of Zayed the First). It's not the biggest or most luxurious museum (which is a feat in a country known for big luxury), but it is pretty cool if you're in to actual historical exhibits (Al Ain's other museum is in the Palace and is more about the life of royalty). The National Museum houses archeological artifacts from the Hili Archeological Site on the outskirts of Al Ain, has ethnographic exhibits on life in the UAE, and a really neat collection of all of the gifts Sheikh Zayed received during his rule from other nations.
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| Dudes doing stuff (I can't remember the name of the exhibit) |
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| A handwritten Quran with a pearl inlay cover, gifted to Sheikh Zayed |
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| Topological map of the UAE circa before unification |
Once we'd finished exploring the National museum, we figured we'd had enough after driving around all day and decided to head to the hotel. Needless to say, we got turned around trying to find the road to Jebel Hafeet...but once we started going up it, we pretty much forgot the struggle. We stayed that night at the Mercure Grand, a very 70s sheek hotel at the top of the mountain, and prepared for our border crossing into Oman towards Nizwa the next day.
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| Heading towards Jebel Hafeet |
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| On the road up |
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| Yo, the 70s called... |
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| The views were stunning, but hazy. |
The next morning, we got packed up and headed back down the mountain towards the UAE-Oman border. There are four places to cross near Al Ain - one of them north of the city, two inside but one restricted to GCC nationals only, and the one south of town, the border near Jebel Hafeet. After researching, it was the easiest to pass and also the shortest crossing. We arrived on the UAE side, waited for our exit stamps, and were through to Oman with no hassle for our entry stamps. We had a mild moment of panic, because the first road signs we saw were all in Arabic, but like the UAE, Oman seems to have a requirement that all signs be in both Arabic and English (the important ones, anyway). We passed through border control easily and took off for Nizwa, which, according to our guidebook, is a very popular tourist destination these days, despite the fact that only 50 years ago Thesiger was forced to steer clear of it during his crossing of the Empty Quarter, because his Bedouin guides were convinced it was too fiercely conservative for him.
The road from Jebel Hafeet to Nizwa is roughly 3 hours, under the best of conditions. We must have traveled through a gazillion roundabouts (thanks for that, Brits!) and a ton of construction closer to Nizwa, but we weren't prepared for just how gorgeous the drive was. The flat desert soon gave way to views of Oman's stunning mountains, and the drive takes you right past Jebel Shams, the highest peak. One of the attractions of staying in Nizwa is its proximity to the mountains. Jebel Shams also borders the Omani Grand Canyon, Wadi Ghul. Sadly, we didn't get to see these stunning views up close because I sort of neglected to read the part where the roads up these mountains were only accessible by 4WD vehicles, and while Kaylee is an awesome ride, she is definitely not 4WD. There were a few places noted in the guidebook as worth a visit in Nizwa, namely the Fort, that we decided we wanted to explore, however.
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| Welcome to Oman. Here, have some mountains. |
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| Passing a camel carrier. Can't they just walk?! |
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| Mountains |
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| Beauty. |
Once we finally checked in to our hotel, which was nice enough but was also undergoing renovations, we decided to just rest and refresh in Nizwa and see if we couldn't explore the next day before we left for Muscat. We needed to visit a money changer, also. Now Nizwa, while pitched as a popular tourist destination, isn't the most tourist friendly of places. We were sent to the LuLu hypermarket to find an exchange, despite passing several smaller local banks on the way there. Nizwa is also what I would classify as still fairly conservative. I consistently respect the culture I live in and never dress in any manner that shows my knees or shoulders, yet in Nizwa I still felt uncomfortable. The locals outside of the hotel clearly weren't used to visitors wandering around, and also seemed not used to western dress. In fact, I only saw two other women who weren't wearing a hijab, and began to wonder if it was something that was expected there (obviously not, seeing as it is not law in Oman and there were others who weren't covered). The workers at the exchange seemed to view us as a novelty, and were totally baffled by our American passports. We changed our dirhams to riyals, and headed back to the hotel.
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| Not too shabby a view from the parking lot. |
I don't mean to give off the idea that I didn't like Nizwa, or that you shouldn't stay there. I just want to accurately relay my experience as much as possible. This includes, for me at least, describing situations that aren't necessarily positive ones. The ME has taught me a lot about not letting small things color your experiences, because you will inevitably run into them no matter how hard you try or plan. Something that seems as simple as a regional road trip is always full of surprises and monkey wrenches.
If you're traveling through to Muscat and want to break up the drive, or you want a place to stay near Jebel Shams/Wadi Ghul/the historic village of Bahla, Nizwa's a place with a good location, fabulous restaurants (at least the one attached to our hotel was), and a small town feel. It's worth noting that all of the main roads through the city seem to be under construction currently, and there is some definite re-routing and odd maneuvering that has to be done to get around. We enjoyed the hospitality at our hotel and its restaurant. After dinner we relaxed with tea and desert, and then headed back to the room for a good night's sleep before our trip to Muscat.
