3.12. Bandar Khiran and Muscat at night

On the last Omani morning, we have breakfast with a view of the goats in the rock face opposite the tent. We walk back to the main road and after a while we stop at Bimmah hole, a very famous and frequented by tourists depression, at the bottom of which is a salt lake. After 30 days, we meet a lot of tourists for the second time. There is a well-maintained park in the vicinity of the sinkhole, a staircase leads to the bottom of the hole, and for now you can swim here. I take a few steps in the salt water, and we continue, looking forward to the sea.

We choose a shortcut to the sea to Al Khiran, and if it's a shortcut, we're not driving on asphalt, we're driving through the mountains. First of all, it's a really nice and smooth Polňačka, it can go up to 80 km/h, it could be really faster here. There are beautiful mountains and valleys around us. Probably not enough adrenaline for Ota, we'll shorten the shortcut even more along the way, I'm sorry. This is where the real offroad begins, we drive through a beautiful valley, in the last third of the shortcut we prefer to look at the road and throw away larger boulders. The last part is probably under water when it rains, but it's dry here today. I want to go back, we are leaving today and I am afraid of complications, but Ota decides that it will be possible. We prefer to walk with the children. We attribute the first descent of this vádí to ourselves and continue on. (Okay, probably not the first descent, but this road won't be very busy.)

In a moment we are already looking at the Bandar Khiran reservation. There is a jagged coastline and a number of islets. We go down a very steep and bumpy road to a small rocky beach where a few boats are moored. The water is clear and the nearest island is within reach. We go snorkeling with the children and finally inflate a paddleboard for the first time, Lenka is afraid of fish, so she ends up riding it. We go to the island for the cache, the way to the top is steep and scree-like, but we are rewarded. From the top there is a wonderful circular view of the entire area. On the way back, we still snorkel with Aneta and David near the island, nobody wants to swim in the afternoon, so we dry off and pack for the plane. The local cats annoy us, when we find out that they want nothing more than plain water, so the children make bowls for them and make sure that they get to each one. Repacking after a month is endless, we also pack car seats and all camping equipment in bags. We still have to get rid of the local stove, which we will not bring back. A guy comes to the dustbin, greets us and looks for what he can find there, we give him a stove and some leftover dry food like rice, lentils, sugar and when I see his enthusiasm I add some cookies. We're leaving in the dark, we don't want to be the last ones here, some cars had trouble getting out, so we had to be pulled out. Although we swim a little, we leave on the first try.

It's a short distance to Muscat, first we stop in Old Muscat, where we walk to the Sultan's palace Al Alam and around, everything is nicely lit and it's a pleasant evening. The last stop is in busy Muttrah, we walk through the narrow streets of the old buildings and walk through the market, finally we have the last shawarma on the seaside promenade and we have to go to the airport. We pass familiar places, the children get to know the opera house and the Kábos Mosque.

We argue awkwardly for a while while handing over the car, the guy picked one of the hundreds of smudges on the car and claims we did it. There are a lot of smudges like that on a 5-year-old car, we don't know why he chose this one, it's not even possible to take a proper photo and it's not something we could have noticed when we took over the car. Finally, he calls the boss and says that the boss will look into it tomorrow and get back to us. However, we warn him that if they solve the invisible scratch, we will solve the fact that they gave us another car at the beginning, that we had to wait for them for over 2 hours and that the car they gave us had a punctured tire, which we had to solve ourselves.

It is 2 degrees lower than when we arrived (26°C) but it seems to us that it is much colder, we are already used to the heat, it will be -8°C in Prague. It's 10 pm and we have a night at the airport, we don't sleep at all, we have to move on every 2 hours. Baggage check-in, passport control, gate. The plane is delayed, but we don't know anything, we just sit at the gate an hour longer. Around four-thirty, children gradually drop out. David can't be woken up, so Ota has to take him to the plane, the girls have to wake up, there's nothing you can do. We are waiting on the plane for some more time before we finally get the green light, but it doesn't matter, we have a 4-hour transfer in Istanbul, so we will be there for a shorter time.