I spent the summer in the UAE: a couple of road trips, a few Iftar dinners (breaking the Ramadan Fast), lots of reading, and the all important re-energizing after a hectic end to the last school year (3 weeks of library inventory (1st proper inventory since the school opened) using 350 person hours - 180 of which were mine!).
The start of this school year has been HECTIC! There are many new systems being implemented and it seems that each week there is something "NEW" to do - I am glad I am not a classroom teacher as they seem to be getting hard with all the new systems.
After 6 long weeks we have a week break for Eid al Adha (this Eid is connected with the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son). To rejuvenate I spent the first 2 days with a fever and major flu like symptoms. :-(
Once I recovered sufficiently, I went on a 'Corleen style road trip'. This type of road trip involves either a) no clue where one is going, or b) a vague idea of a general destination but no real clue about what to do once one arrives. This type of trip is about the journey, discovery, and adventure.
I convinced my friend CZ to accompany me - adventure is always more fun when there is someone to share the silliness, expectation, and unknown with.
Our location was Fort Hatta UAE - approximately 1 hour from Dubai (The UAE isn't overly large so nothing is really that far away). The standard route take you through OMAN (Oman sticks up in to the UAE for a few 10s of kilometres). I wasn't sure about the technicalities (visas to transit back in to the UAE, costs, if my vehicle insurance covered a short trip in to OMAN, etc) so I had opted not to take that route. The alternate route would take us through more of the HAJAR MOUNTAINS and would probably only be approximately 30 minutes longer - the best laid plans....
WELL, there was some strangeness on the main 12 lane divided highway we needed to take to get to the turn off. There was a SEVERAL KILOMETRE tailback of transport trucks in the centre lane of my side of the divided highway (yes, the centre land - very strange); we exited the main road a bit earlier than planned and broke out the GPS to help guide us to the desired road. The GPS guided us to the standard route - which we still did not want to take so we added a few more kilometres, some new unexplored territory and another hour to our arrival journey.
When we arrived at Fort Hatta it had started to RAIN - YES RAIN in the UAE. The sky was gun metal grey and there was rumblings of thunder. We made it in to the hotel for lunch before the deluge and were lucky enough that the rain stopped as we finished lunch.
After lunch we walked around the Hatta Heritage Village - a restoration of some 16th century dwellings (not that spectacular - the write up made it sound fabulous), Hatta Hill Park (a lovely friendly stray cat walked with us most of the way to the top), and then we drove back through the mountains to go back to Dubai.
We did stop in the mountains for a short while to photograph some wandering goats - one in particular was quite curious and dog like. this goat even put both it's front feet up on my torso and was trying to get a better look at the camera....
All in all it was a fun, (micro)adventure filled day!
Some of the scenery along the drive
Courtyard of one of the houses in the heritage village (with watch tower in the background)
The friendly 'puppy-goat'.
