UNSPOILED (?) OMAN

Last week, we were gifted with yet another cluster of days off. Omani National Day gave us two extra days to tack onto the front end of our normal Thursday-Friday weekend, so, around here when the weekend gets good, the good go camping.

I had been invited several times to an "unspoiled" beach near the fishing village of Seifa quite a ways east of Muscat off the main road. This weekend, Meriel and Carlo Carboni (the on-campus couple who first gave me lifts to the Protestant Church before I had a car) and a group of their Russian friends (long story!) had planned to spend two days on the front end of the weekend to leave the last to days for other household duties.

Tuesday morning, we all met at the Carbonis'. I was to take Liubov, an EFL teacher from Russia, her granddaughter Yana and daughter-in-law Svieta in my car. It was a bit tight with three four people plus camping gear, but we made it! Meriel was in an SUV with another Russian prof at SQU, Sergei and his kids; Anvar, a Tatar Muslim hydrologist from Russia (I'm not making any of this up!) and his wife Roza and kids were in the third. We all left in convoy. Carlo and the high school kids from the school that didn't give Tuesday off would join us later that evening.

First, we headed to downtown Muscat, turned off on some congested little streets (absolutely no signs) that took us very suddenly to the end of town (the high cliffs helped end the town there), and the little road started to wind upwards. It was blacktop for about an hour, winding through multi-colored barren rock mountains, then down into palm oases and villages till we hit the coast. Then it was dirt road for another 30 minutes or so. (I'm getting tired of being the vehicle in the middle eating everyone else's dust!) Eventually, we reached Seifa beach, a "beautiful, unspoiled off-road beach" that's due to be developed into a luxury hotel or two in the coming years. "See it now while it's still unspoilt!" everyone kept telling me.

Another Russian, a very butch linguistics prof, had already set up her tent on the top of a dune (picture one 15' high), so although the rest agreed that camping near the shady grove of pricker trees might be optimal, we joined her on top of the dune, lugging trip after trip of tent, cooler, etc. up the sandy cliffs. The view on top was pretty spectacular: a long stretch of sandy beach ending in a rocky promentory on the east side with beautiful blue-green water. Behind us in the distance were the ever-present Omani mountains, dry, rocky and forbidding. The site was marred, however, by plastic trash bags blowing in the breeze and litter everywhere. Being "off-road" in Oman means that only 45% of the expat community can reach the site, the SUV and 4-wheel vehicle being common. By noon the first day, the entire top of the long dune was full of tents and campers to the end of the beach.

Realizing that camping is (rightly) a major passtime among expats here, I have broken down and purchased the requisite camping gear now: sleeping bag, tent, cooler, and most recently, a big fat foam mattress to put under the sleeping bag (some campsites are lumpy and rocky). My last sleeping bag was "borrowed" back in the late '80s and never returned. (A true camper, I'm not!)

The best time of the whole trip was the first evening, watching the sunset behind the mountains, letting skin-cancer-challenged me come out from the grove of trees where I had retreated to read and wander back to the campsite. Anvar, a true pyromaniac, had a huge bonfire going, stripping every bit of driftwood and dry pirckly tree branch in the area to feed it. The Russians had mainly all homemade fare: boiled potatoes, boiled eggs, various salads, etc. Living up to my Yankee heritage, I had brought processed, plastic-covered cheese, turkey and store-bought items. (Including real Omani dates, I hasten to add!) With all the kids, parents, and a couple singles (me and an Argentinian visiting physics prof named Silvana) fighting over the tiny table space, dinner lasted over an hour. Anvar had a decrepit, blackened teapot on top of the coals, which eventually whistled, signaling we could have our after-dinner tea and coffee.

Carlo got out his guitar and started playing folk songs, mainly 60's and 70's tunes (his generation), and he and I got a Simon and Garfunkel groove going. The Russian adults and Silvana sat on the sand nearby enjoying our occasional moments of musicality. The moon rose over the edge of the sea (not making this up), starting a ghostly green and growing to irritating brightness by the middle of the night, hanging overhead like a searchlight. But during the guitar serenading, it cast a beautiful white wake over the sea all the way to the beach in front of us. With a gentle breeze, it was almost cliché.

The next morning, nature was not as loving. A steady little breeze at breakfast turned into almost gale force (30 mph?) steady wind by lunch, forcing us to use rocks to hold down the food, and blowing tents almost over. Breaking camp after lunch and lugging every bit of camping equipment and trash bag back down the dune to the cars was not fun.

We arrived back in civilization, coated in sea salt, sand in every cranny, weary and wind-blown, but it was worth it!