So we've just celebrated yet another holiday in Oman. This time it was Eid Al Adha - the feast of sacrifice. With this came 4 days of public holidays. Now I'm never one to complain about getting a day off work, but with having a number of visitors (my parents and Jenny's sister and her boyfriend) and a lot of visitor attractions closed, it made it difficult to come up with ideas of different things to do. Unfortunately it's still a little bit on the hot side to chill out at the beach or by the pool.
Despite having been in Oman for 6 months now and Jenny working for Oman Sail, we've not actually been out on any of the boats. So this holiday seemed the perfect opportunity to put this right. As Jenny's sister's boyfriend Craig is in the Navy, we were able to make use of his qualifications and charter one of Oman Sail's powerboats for the day - note to self, must take a Powerboat course!
It was typical that the day we charter the boat is the day that thundery showers were forecast, but the sun was shining in the morning so we headed out anyway.
We had only left the Wave about 10 minutes when we spotted a school of dolphins. We slowed down and some of them swam right up to the boat and started jumping and playing right next to the boat.
Our plan for the day was to take the boat out to the Daymaniyat Islands, which are a series of seven small islands approximately an hour's boat ride from The Wave. They are renowned as being one of Oman's best dive spots, but good for snorkelling too. The islands are part of a Nature Reserve so it is not possible to land on the islands between the months of May and October so as not to disturb the nesting turtles. The waters around the Island are such an amazing shade of blue.
So, after a spot of snorkelling and enjoying the beautiful warm waters, we headed to a neighbouring island, Kharabah where we could moor up and have a spot of lunch. It was very picturesque and could have featured on a postcard, but what was really sad, was that once you stepped away from the beach the island was full of rubbish.
The day was going perfectly well until it came to getting back on the boat and I caught my feet on a couple of rocks. I managed to slice the top of my big toe and it turns out that it bleeds quite profusely. The boat looked like we'd slaughtered a small animal, so when we arrived back at the marina I headed to the hospital to get it checked out and a couple of stitches.
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