13.11. Wadi Bani Awf

The morning is beautiful again, I wash a few things in the washing machine and the children bathe, so we don't leave until around 11 a.m. We are headed to Wadi Bani Awf, which should be used to reach the other side of the mountains to Al Hamra. Google even tracks the way there, so we want to try it. We buy an extra supply of water in case we get stuck there. At the very beginning, we drive between high mountains, at the point where the asphalt road ends, there is a warning that whoever brought Google here should rather go around it, that this road to Al Hamra is very "bumpy" and only for experienced 4WD drivers. To our delight, we interpret this to mean that it is passable. We turn on the quad bike and set off on an adventurous journey. There's a lot of traffic, so we're riding in a line and it's terribly dusty. We stop to get some distance, eventually we make it. The road twists and turns, new and new vistas open up for us.

We arrive at a place where several cars are parked, we stop, there must be something here, and yes, Little snake canyon. We put on our sandals and go for a short walk, Lenka makes a scene in the car that she doesn't want to go anywhere, that she wants to read, but we insist that she go to read in the shade. Finally she goes and after 50 meters she is already jumping with enthusiasm, as she likes it. We only want to walk a short distance, so we don't take anything with us, but the children enjoy climbing over rocks, so we continue on, we meet the Czechs from Adventure, who are walking from below, they say they walk for about 30-40 minutes, but at the beginning they swam and there was no way around it. The children want to continue, so we climb down the big boulders of the canyon and occasionally wade lightly to the place where there is really deep water and vertical walls of the gorge. We don't have a camera bag and documents, and David doesn't swim that well, so we go back to the car. We are already thirsty and hungry, so we take a watermelon to the edge of the gorge, which falls completely.

We continue through the valley, it's about 2 hours into the dark, so we'll look around for a place to stay. Finally, we climb and cross into another valley, where the big Snake canyon begins. We meet a native on a motorbike, he talks to us cordially, shows us videos of French tourists and laughs at everything, he wants to take a picture of us too, so we take his picture in return. He confirms to us that there is a campsite in Bima, which is at the beginning of the simpler branch of the Snake canyon.

We arrive in Bimah, someone is already camping at the beginning of the canyon right in the wadi. We go to the canyon to see if we can find a lake to swim in, but it's too dry, we walk a little way to a rock that we might put down, but certainly not up, so we return. To sleep, we go a short distance to a terraced campsite next to the road, it's quite nice and in the end we're alone here, we make a fire and cook dinner, it's pleasant in the mountains, even for a sweatshirt.