So it's April...

It’s been a little while since my last update. What has kept me away? Well, well… a bit of panic as deadlines for assignments and exams approach meaning that any time for writing has to be dedicated to essays. Then as the heat season steadily approaches and makes itself announced with the random days of high humidity and heat, one has to prioritise and make the most of the time we have left for outdoor activities.

Amongst the latest adventures I can mention a camping/diving trip to the Daymanyiat Islands. Nine beautiful islands 1-1.5 hrs by boat off the coast from Muscat. Now this was supposed to be some kind of an amazing trip on an idyllic desert island although unfortunately rough seas and a series of unfortunate events mainly triggered by a group of “others” who seemed to be under the influence of a jinx meant that we had to put up with some undesirable incidents. Although nothing was bad enough to stop us from making a lot of fun out of the whole situation so we still ended up laughing our heads out while still waiting for food at 10pm at night and emerging from the darkness after a very late night dive at 2:00 am in the morning. Amongst the things that keep on resurfacing to memory about the trip are funny conversations around the table while waiting for a late BBQ dinner to be served, a friend falling off her chair every two minutes allegedly because of the uneven sand surface (more likely because of the amount of mind-clouding beverages consumed), one of the leaders coming over from the “others” camp reporting that two had been bitten by scorpions, another resurfaced from a dive with a hand covered in sea urchin spines after deciding to grab it to control his buoyancy under water (never a good idea) and that their gazebo unexpectedly collapsed over them. The following day I also assisted to someone on the brink of drowning after he decided to jump off the big boat for a swim forgetting that maybe he didn’t quite know how to swim. There was lots of other stuff that read here may not sound so hilarious but I can assure you that the whole weekend was nothing short of comical if not a little bit tense at times when I remembered that in fact this was a trip I took the bother to organize and felt responsible for.

After the commotions of the previous one, last weekend we decided to take it easy (or so we thought) so on Thursday we headed off to visit a wadi we have never visited before. This is known on the off-road bible as “The Chains” basically because at some point along the trekking path there are some metal chains to help you make your way over a massive boulder (well not as easy as it sounds). In reality the trek is not very long although with the thousands of stops for photos and the heavy scrambling it took us 1.5 hrs going up river. The landscape is spectacular and the “path” unwinds along a beautiful narrow canyon carved by the water with dramatic tall walls climbing high on each side. Nothing to be tackled during seasonal rains I guess. Luckily 3 local kids that came out of nowhere (as usual) followed us and helped us along the way and I could not suppress some hysterical laughter when S. got his feet stuck on the metal loops and the kids were trying to help him hanging in all sorts of positions from a steep rock. Probably seen from the fly on the wall the whole excursion wasn’t exactly the fruit of common sense but it was fun nonetheless. The photos don’t quite do it justice. 

After all these adrenaline packed activities maybe it was time for something tamed and relaxed so we ended the weekend yesterday with bubbly brunch at one of the fancy hotels in town. This basically meant stuffing our faces and then rolling out onto the hotel grounds for some more “chilling” (or should I say sweating). For some reason we later ended up at our friends’ house on a mission to seriously compromise our vocal cords while “singing” completely out of tune into the small hours enthralled by SingStar (ah the power of Karaoke!). Hail to the thick walls of big houses!

Ah, I hope you all had a great Easter. Here it was just a working day like any other.