Saturday, January 21, 2012

Back "home" in Dibba

I'm currently back in Dibba, Oman to work for Absolute Adventure. I got to celebrate by 26th birthday en-route to Dubai, this time joined by my boyfriend Tony. We celebrated by having a nice glass of wine in the NYC airport before boarding our flight to Paris and then on to Dubai.

I'm excited to be living in the "yellow house" again, a bright house nestled between the mountains and the ocean. We have a really great view of the mountains from our front porch. Its gerat living here- we can go sea kayaking and rock climbing in the same day!


Our work started with a school group from Dubai. Tony and I taught sea kayaking together and had tons of fun with the kids. We were lucky to have good weather while they were here. After the kids left we spend our afternoon climbing in the wadi with our housemates Jessa and Stephen. Yesterday Tony and I took a group of college students from the Petroleum Institute on a dhow cruise up the coast.

Last night there was some rain and lots of wind. Here, any rain at all is dangerous, especially in the Wadi- small amounts of rain causes rocks to fall from the mountain. Rocks of all shapes and sizes are held against the mountainside by compacted dirt. When that dirt gets wet, it relaxes its grip on those rocks- which go tumbling down the mountainside and into the wadi. Heavy rain causes flash flooding that's powerful enough to move boulders the size of houses. We had a Jebel Kiwi trek planned which requires driving way up into the wadi and then trekking high up in the mountains. We changed our plans and took the clients to Smuggler's Bay instead- a hike through the mountains along the coast to a beautiful secluded beach.

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