When Possible, Make a U-Turn

Road Tripping to Oman


What four women and one eight year old thought would be a casual drive to Turtle Bay in Oman turned into a fourteen hour nightmare. Sure, we knew the trip was sort of ill-planned. Rachel had gotten a hold of someone at this desert camp, and we were signed up to sleep there for four nights. If the camp was two hours south of Muscat, how far could it be? When you look at a map, the UAE and Oman are both smooshed up there in the top of the Arabian Peninsula. There was a mountain range between us and the east coast of Oman, but nothing that looked too hairy to navigate. Plus, in our two cars, we would have the supreme navigation skills of Sylvia, Bethany and Neena’s GPS, who delivered directions in a clipped, toneless, British fashion and my more emotional Gert, a hot pink GPS set to American English, who made her directional pronouncements in a voice alternating from one of maternal pride, when I was on track, to chiding annoyance, if I inadvertently took the wrong route.

Our first mistake was a late start. I had emphatically insisted on an 8:45 a.m. start for our car, which would contain Neena, Sam, all our gear, and me. Bethany and Rachel were to go in the other car, and they were ready at the appointed hour. Neena was not. She had another Master’s degree online course paper due, and its spectral presence was to haunt us on this trip. Having worked on it late the night before, Neena overslept, so by the time she got herself and her computer with the half-written paper sorted out, it was close to 10 a.m.


We still weren’t worried. The trip looked to be about eight hours long, so without turning on our GPS’s, we made our way to the border. We’d already been there three times to have our visitor visas renewed. The border is an hour away, and the check-through usually takes about 45 minutes. We were finally on the Omani side when Bethany had a spirited discussion with an Omani guard.

“He seems to be saying we can’t get to Muscat from this border,” she said, puzzled. Was there a language barrier? “He says we need to go back to Fujairah and drive to the border that way.”

“No. I am not doing that,” I said, in disbelief. We were in the country already, couldn’t we just start heading right, over to the eastern coast?

“Well, yes,” said the guard in Arabic, “but it is a four wheel drive road and your Yaris’s will never make it!”

We had unwittingly driven to the wrong border. There was no real road to Muscat from this border! This was a major setback. Now we needed to drive back to the UAE, across the country, and enter Oman from the west coast. Tempers frayed as we negotiated our way back through the border checkpoints. Whose damn fault was this? No one’s apparently. Just a wrong assumption, that if we drove to Oman, we could get to where we were going. At 1 p.m. we were headed back to the UAE and to Fujairah.

At this point we relaxed into knowing that it was going to be a very long trip. As we neared the second border crossing, we had the Arabian Sea to our left, and the imposing, dry, wrinkled and jutting Hajar Mountains to our right. At least the drive was picturesque. We were passing through a succession of small coastal towns, with fishing boats and center roundabouts, and the beautiful omnipresent mosques in every town.

The second border crossing was nearly painless, and with Sylvia and Gert bleating directions, we pressed on. At one point, many hours later, and after a quick meal at one of the ubiquitous, yet unnervingly friendly (our first exposure to sunny Omani personalities) McDonalds, Gert and Sylvia began to quarrel. The lead car had different directions. Sylvia barked repeatedly, “When possible, make a u-turn!” Gert sounded disappointed by our failure to follow her directions. In the pitch dark, Rachel was now driving my car, and Neena and Bethany were in the lead. We had gotten separated twice, so Rachel made the decision to turn our GPS off, and just follow their directions.

Once past Muscat, and with an almost full moon hanging overhead, we turned onto a brand new road, which headed up into the mountains to Sur, close to our final destination. This road was so new, that the tollbooths were unmanned, and they loomed ghostly, as we squeezed through one unblocked gate. Even more alarmingly, big thick white arrows painted on the tarmac pointed toward us on our side of the road, showing that the flow of traffic was coming towards us, yet we were one of several cars moving in our direction. We finally concluded that the road was so new, they were using it as a dual carriageway, and would later cut off traffic moving in our direction and reroute it onto a yet to be built road.

Soon after midnight the GPS (which I had sneakily turned on again) revealed the merrily waving black and white checked flag marking our final destination. Gert beamed, “You have reached your final destination!” Turtle Bay Beach Resort was eerily quiet. There were cars in the parking lot and the gates were open, but no one was around to check us in.

Finally, Bethany and Rachel decided to put up their tent in a strongly whipping wind. A late arriving Indian family helped them to secure the tent to the car. Neena originally planned to sleep in the car, but finally she settled on my choice. An old shipping boat had been reconstructed into an open-air restaurant by the beach. I tucked Sam into his sleeping bag on some cushions and stroked his wiry hair until he calmed down enough to sleep. Then Neena and I sat by the beach and enjoyed arrival cocktails while watching the millions of stars in the sky compete with the glitter of phosphorescent algae sparking in the waves by the beach. It was such a beautiful spot that Neena, a self-proclaimed “I’ll flirt with a fly” kind of girl, told me that because it was so beautiful out, with the wind and the waves and the stars, that she thought she might have to propose to me. I declined, much to her relief. But it was a special spot, with its thatched date frond huts on the beach, and gaily-strung Christmas lights. For those romantically inclined, and with the right person, mind you, I would highly recommend it.

The next morning, we awoke in the stern of the boat to the disapproving face of an Indian worker. “Where are your reservations,” he demanded prissily. “Poff? Rachel? Osius? Lanier? Engman?” I said helpfully. The long and short of it was we had crashed at the WRONG resort, and a significantly more expensive one at that. We hastily packed our sleeping bags, repacked the cars, and after misplaced key hunting for twenty minutes, (Neena, the other car) we beat a hasty retreat. We arrived at the second resort by 9 a.m. The Nazreeb camp, at first sight, was daunting. Where was the promised beach? The turtles?

Tiny, squat huts surrounded the perimeter, which was encompassed by barbed wire, to keep the goats out, we later learned. Tall, parched mountains ringed the camp. The sun beat down, the wind whipped through the camp, throwing sand up into our faces. The place looked deserted.

“This place looks like a refugee camp!” a disappointed Rachel exploded. I sank down onto the rickety wooden platform behind my ugly hut. Bethany and Rachel and I looked around, disheartened. Suddenly I began to laugh, and laugh. “Wow. I’ve never seen you laugh like this,” said Bethany, slightly disconcerted. My laughter turned into tears. After hours of traveling and after seeing the beauty of the other resort ($135 a night), we were going to stay here? Rachel comforted me. We’ve all broken down at various times here. Apparently my time had come. “It’ll be alright, Lucy! You and Sam take a nap. This will seem better after you have rested.” I knew she was right, so I took Sam into the hut, read him a few bedtime stories at 11 in the morning, read my own book, and fell into a deep sleep to the relaxing sound of the date fronds, which made up our hut walls, swishing in the wind. It sounded like ocean waves crashing on a shore, when in reality, the shore was three or four kilometers away.

Four p.m., and we were all awake, if groggy. The desolate camp had been transformed during our nap. The light was softer. The camp bustled with activity. Now it seemed more like a United Nations gathering than a refugee camp. Families of all nationalities roamed around in colorful clothes. We all walked over to the central gathering area in the middle of the camp, which was split into two parts: two cement ledges, 25x25 feet each, covered with carpets and pillows and the fire pit area, and a second, open-air dining area. I walked into the dining room. There were several Bedouins lounging in plastic chairs. “I am Ali,” said one. He flashed me a blinding white smile, delivered with a quick wink. He would later tell us that the wink to Arabs is somewhat naughty, signifying dishonorable attentions. Dressed in a floor length kandora and with a turquoise blue patterned scarf wrapped jauntily around his head, the sight of dashing Ali brightened up the camp, and our spirits, enormously.

In the course of our two nights at the camp, Ali would become our ally, and Neena’s romantic interest. Ali was 27 years old, heart stoppingly handsome, with a contagious, devilish smile. He smelled heavenly, and we would later learn that he scented himself with two colognes, alternating between his favorite scent, “First Love,” and another, “Love in Tea City.” In fact, Ali was all about love, with his “sweetie” of a truck, rakishly decked out with red crushed velvet and tan fur, and his ceaseless flirting. Like Neena, I had the feeling that Ali could also “flirt with a fly.” They were well matched. Ali, who had worked at the camp for 6 years, attached himself to our little coterie. He would become our friend and bridge to the Omani/Bedouin culture, and he’d been around enough westerners, that even the worst faux pax (like Neena repeatedly asking him if she looked like a pig, while we tried to shush her, and he feigned a lack of understanding) left him unfazed. Handsome Ali had never been to school, yet he had traveled around Europe with a previous Austrian girlfriend, “who broke my heart,” he told us somberly. He had also never brushed his teeth with a toothbrush, ever. He used water and some type of metal pick, accompanied by chewing some native plant for fresh breath. I thought of the European mouths we’d seen on this trip, with their gnarled, greyish teeth. Ali of the strong white teeth might be onto something.

While Ali lent his own flair to our visit, so did many of the other guests, who hailed from Canada, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, and other far flung locales. Rachel named the cement block meeting spot “the Peace Couch,” because of all of the nationalities hanging together and talking peacefully. Sam played soccer, or “football” with kids from four or five different countries, while we talked to the parents. The food at dinner was surprisingly good, with chopped cucumber, carrot and tomato, hot Arab bread, Dahl and rice, and roasted lamb and chicken.

Later that night, we drove en caravan to the science center for turtle viewing. Because of the full moon, the turtles were scarce, but we saw a large mamma, who had ambled onto the beach to lay her eggs, and who was making her laborious way back to the sea, having found the sand an unsatisfactory texture and temperature for laying eggs. The beach was pockmarked with huge holes, where the turtles dug with enormous flippers and buried their eggs. The babies, buried a meter down, spend three to five days digging up to the surface, where they make their break for the sea. If they do make it (and only three in one thousand do), they swim for three days without stopping or eating.

Our guide, Saeed, was knowledgeable, but his English showed his Arab origins. The p and b are often confused. Please becomes Bleaze, and the g is often mispronounced. Saeed was a stern guide. “Ladies and Gentlemen! (Pronounced with a hard g) I have some important scientific information for you. Bleaze! Be quiet!” A particularly recalcitrant and annoyingly amorous group of dark skinned males continued to talk during his presentation, draped all over each other, giggling and interrupting.

“Excuse me. Excuse me. INDIANS!” roared Saed. We gasped and giggled at his very un-PC comment, but the Indians didn’t seem to mind, and quieted down to listen. We saw a little baby boy turtle struggling to the sea. Turtles follow the brightest light, so we were not allowed to take photos with flashes. At one point, someone slipped up, their flash lighting up the dark night. Saeed hurried over, shouting, “Give me that camera this instant!” I was glad it wasn’t one of us.

I fell asleep early, with the book on my chest and the light still on. The generator shut down at 11:30 p.m. I woke up some time after that, cold and needing a bathroom badly. Outside of the hut, the wind moaned and the sky was lit up with millions upon millions of stars. It was dark and cold. I decided it was too dark to try and get to the outhouses, and thought to relieve myself behind the fence, the choice of hundreds before me, I suspected. I looked over by the girls’ cabin and saw a tall,wide, dark mass, with what appeared to be an arm up in a crooked position. I froze. It froze. I stared into the darkness for a long time and finally decided it was some sort of sign or something. The next day I saw it was a squat firebox on long, spindly legs. Rachel and I laughed. She’d seen it the night before as well, and decided it was a man, but because of his skinny legs, she thought, ever the ex-cop, that she could probably take him out if she needed to. I could just imagine her crashing into the firebox, fullback style, to the sound of splintering wood.

The next day we woke up, had coffee, fruit, boiled eggs, and a delectable dish, inauspiciously named foul medammes. Foul medammes are not dirty maidens, but tomato, onion, and garlic navy beans, as far as we could tell, and they are delicious. More lounging around for all of us, and a trip to the beach occupied our day. Neena and I walked to and from the beach, several miles round trip. Bethany and Rachel took Sam straight there in the car. In the daylight, the beach was lovely, and full of dozens of chattering, kandora wearing teen-age boys, who were much interested in our group. We posed for pictures with them and Sam clambered up on the beach cliffs, with the other boys leading the way and guiding Sam over the rough spots.

We decided to leave the next day. The camp was lovely after all, and colorful and warm, despite my first, very tired impressions. We met friendly people, exchanged cards, and in the case of Ali and Neena, pictures and phone numbers. Ali met us in Sur on our way out, where we toured the souk and bought traditional Omani hats, as well as perfume, insense, and Omani long, colorful dresses.

While we explored Sur, Sam planted himself between Neena and Ali, firmly seat belted in. He wasn’t budging, a formidable eight-year-old chaperone, while I chauffeured them around, alone in the front. We made quite a sight, I am sure. And since Ali couldn’t get to Neena, he covered Sam’s sweet little head and cheek with his Bedouin man kisses, thirty of them at least. Ali is one of 12 children, and apparently he is quite comfortable with little squirts like Sam. Neena pronounced herself jealous, since Sam was the recipient of all of his attention. When we parted, with the three of us going north, Ali saluted us goodbye by doing a donut on the tarmac in his truck. Then he and Neena proceeded to send each other googly text messages. His ran along the lines of “Ali x yoar beckshar,” which meant he was kissing Neena’s picture.

While Bethany and Rachel headed back to the UAE, Neena and Sam and I decided to spend one more night in Oman. We’d finally found an internet site to send off her dastardly paper, which had reared its ugly head on each of the successive days. So, since that responsibility was dealt with, and everyone we met was so nice, and the scenery was spectacular, why hurry home? We headed for Sohar, a town halfway home, and got there about 7 p.m. at night. We stayed in a bizarre, crumbling, and previously 5 star sort of fortress. There was a manicured lawn and pool, but the gates to the beach had all fallen away, and there was a sense of general disrepair. Sam had spaghetti through room service, as he’s becoming quite fond of it. After he fell asleep, Neena and I crept over the balcony on our ground floor room, and made two forays out onto the grounds, with frequent stops back to the room, where Sam remained slumbering deeply.

Our first stop was the pool bar, where an appallingly drunk member of Omani royalty, a gentleman by the name of Hassan, tried to lure us into his cherry red Hummer, parked on the beach. “We would love to show you our beautiful beaches,” he pronounced, while his trench coated bodyguard lurked around nearby. We declined. We also made a short trip to a nightclub about 50 yards away, again, after a check on Sam.

I’ve read somewhere that if the split of men to women in any given place is ever more of a disparity than 60/40, get out of there (sorry guys, but this is supposed to be true). This garish bar was awash with bored looking men, idly watching three scantily clad Filipinas belt out rotten 70’s tunes. Though it was not frightening, it was depressing. I talked briefly to a lovely Brit, a sad man who had just been dumped by his much younger Korean wife of three years. She had left him for one of his richer, younger friends. He was quite morose, and surprisingly surprised by this turn of events. In this small Omani city, the close-knit expat crowd was all apprised of this turn of events in Simon’s life. We were only there a short time, but I got a strong sense of what life in conservative, out-of-the way Sohar might be like for the average expat male, and it looked lonely and frustrating. “A real sausage fest,” said Neena correctly, albeit raunchily. Again, I hear Muscat is different, with a lively social scene and females making much more of an appearance.

The final day of our trip we lounged around the pool. Sam swam me around the pool, pushing me in front of him while I clutched a swim board for buoyancy. Sam declared us to be a “big boat with a very small engine,” as indeed we seemed to be.

Our drive back was uneventful, and we were back an hour or two after nightfall. I was sorry to see our trip end, because despite the mishaps, partially arising from poor planning and the lack of an Omani map, we were all entranced by the Omani culture. We talked to Omani men and women alike, an experience that has eluded us completely with the Emeratis here. Their warmth and friendliness was astonishing after this veritable desert of cultural mingling. We were repeatedly asked by locals, “Do you like our country?” They were also pleased we were American, and except for one muttered comment about Obama made to us on the beach in passing, there seemed to be nothing but warmth and hospitality extended in our direction.

Today I have devoted to clean up and preparation for next week’s teaching and next weekend’s trip to India with Sam and Ryer. But today has not been without its own small drama. I have been out on the balcony typing for hours. I kept hearing small pathetic mewing noises coming from the ground. As this was unnerving for me in particular, I decided to take the elevator down to explore. There on the balcony were two tiny, shivering kittens. Sam and I reached through the gate and held them--they must be no more than four weeks old. When I rang the buzzer to the real estate business that was connected to the balcony, a woman answered and said a litter had been found inside one of their buildings, and of the five kittens, these two pathetic balls of fur were all that was left. The rest have been adopted. I am here to tell you, these are not going to be our cats! But they are in our apartment for the moment. They were famished, and after tripping in and out of the food and milk bowls and eating in a famished fashion, they are now sleeping together on soft towels inside a very large, clear plastic box. They are so small and were shaking and afraid, and now they are well fed and sleeping together, all curled up. That is very satisfying. Anyone want two small kittens? I think we will name one of them Gilman, after the small, defunct mining town just outside of Leadville. And the other, the small black and white runt, we will name Beckshar, in honor of a very memorable Omani trip.

Sam's B-day

Hi everybody:

I am just sending a quick update. Thanks for individual emails. I just emailed Mom and Deb with a tentative summer timeline for Sammy and me, which has us arriving in CO June 12, spending much of July in MD and flying out of Colorado and back to Dubai around August 15. So it looks like we will have two months at home.

I had my 90-day professional review with my principal yesterday. It went well. He says I have a job next year. Of course I remain concerned about the low student recruitment-I still have only one student-and the prohibitive price of enrollment. Will there be a school next year? I believe so. There remains the challenge of a somewhat divided staff. There are really strong personalities on this staff. Some people have had different professional responsibilities in the past, and are bringing that baggage to the new job. Old habits die hard, sort of thing. Our CEO told me, "This too shall pass. Right now, you guys are like a bunch of relatives who have all overstayed your welcome in each other's houses. It will be better after the two December breaks." I bet he is right. That was A LOT of together time in that trailer in La Joya Bay before the school opened. Meanwhile, I enjoy my nice friends here, as does Sam, who now has four friends his age.

Sam Osius is having a great time with his teacher Rachel. He is learning a ton. I mean a ton. Double digit addition and subtraction, place value up to 1,000, he is reading more fluently, and she is tackling phonics with him, so he is learning how to sound words out. He is still a terrible speller, but they are working on that too. Essentially, he has a private tutor 5 days a week, and I think he will be caught up in no time. I am very proud of him, as is she. He is working so hard. Yesterday my son Sam, and my student Sammy, both made presentations on the UAE and RAK, respectively. They both had projects to present, and posters, and maps, as well as fact sheets on their assignments. Both boys did a bang up job presenting yesterday. Son Sam read in a tremulous voice, but you could hear him!

Thanksgiving was a very interesting, and super exhausting day. I was up at 6 a.m., and Sam and Rachel and I drove to Dubai. Rachel drove, because I hate Dubai traffic so much. She is an ex cop, so she drives really well. We found the Indian Consulate, and spent most of the day there. I will need to go pick up our visas this Wednesday, another all day affair. This would have been a painless process, if I had just had our residency visas here in the UAE. We were there the morning after the Mumbai shootings. I expected a weird vibe, but all seemed to be (extremely slow) business as usual.

Today is UAE National Day. Something like our July 1, without the beer and barbeque, I suspect. Sam is going to the beach with Neena and Rachel, and I have a day to organize before Lizzie arrives. Plus I need to turn my attention to planning next week’s Oman camping trip.

Back to Thanksgiving Day... We rushed home in time to get our eleven-pound turkey “Tom” in the oven. Then we cooked frantically. I had eight people. I have a picture of our dinner up on Facebook, lots of pics there, if you are in a position to check. We had a fantastic meal, and I slept like a log that night after the cleanup. Turkey has some natural sedative in it, doesn’t it?

One other element made the day unique. We had torrential rain here in RAK. Luckily this all happened after the trip to Dubai and during turkey dinner preparations. Sam was so excited he called the taxi stand where he is assistant manager, and Mohammed drove him up to the fort hotel. He always has his phone with him, and the General Manager, Mr. Nicholas, has taken a very fond and proprietary interest in him. Sam eats at the buffet free, whenever he wants to, and sometimes arrives home after his fort forays with a take-away box stuffed with buffet delicacies.

So, I was in phone contact with him when the fort went into lockdown. No one was allowed in or out because of the rain and lightening. Meanwhile, back at my building, Rachel and I were cooking like mad. Suddenly, lightening hit the building and the fire alarm went off. I called Sam, Sam told Mr. Nicholas, and someone came to turn it off. But all was wind, lightening, flooding and chaos. At this point, Sam was calling me telling me that he was sending Mohammed to pick us up because the building was not safe. I told Sam to stop making arrangements for me (!) and to come home in a taxi. So they let him out of the fort, and a taxi made its slow and careful way the ¾ mile to my building. The road was flooded, and Sam’s taxi got stuck in the flood! He was calling me all excited, saying, “Mom, I can’t open the door or all the water will come in!” We ran down, and a worker pulled him out through the window (the car was not buoyant, just stuck in high water) and delivered him to his mama waiting on the sidewalk in the rain. Very, very exciting for a seven-year-old boy, as you can well imagine. Bethany went downstairs and took photos, so when she puts them up on Facebook, I will pass them along. (Speaking of Facebook, Mom, Fred Lewis is my friend on Facebook. Don’t you guys want to join? Then you can see pics that don’t get sent to you directly.)


The next day, Sam turned eight, and I drove him to Fujairah for an overnight stay. We ordered room service for his birthday dinner, and the food came in a rolling cart with a heated compartment underneath. This was terribly exciting. My friends Neena and her sister Eda (both half Puerto Rican, Eda is the visiting sister from the US, and Neena works at my school) had a suite there, so we dined on their especially elegant balcony. The next day Sam took a paddleboat out into the Arabian Sea with Eda, and I sailed a little Sunfish around. We wrapped up our weekend with a little bit of pool time, and then home we came.

During my review, my principal told me that the way that he is proudest of me is that I had the courage as a single mom to come over here and expose Sam to this culture/experience. I am enjoying it, to be sure, but I have my professional frustrations, with a delayed start, and a class of one student! I do think the experience is proving to be very beneficial to Sam, most of the time. There are times when he misses home, family, and Kiwi and Daisy (Not necessarily in that order!). But overall, he continues to be pretty engaged in what is going on here. Let’s hope he is a better educated, more open-minded adult as a result.

Well, that is it for the latest summary. If there is a blurb I can produce out of camping on the beaches of Oman with friends, I will send it out in the next 10 days.

If anyone wants a personal correspondence, I have these lovely 10 days off, so send me an email and this time I will write back, I PROMISE. Right now I am not working 7:30 to 3:30 (with no permission to use email at work) and commuting 40 minutes each way, plus trying to exercise, and the usual Sam routine in the evening. So I have the luxury of time! Yum yum.

Much love, and hope you all are well, happy and enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday.

Lucy and Sam too