travel – Page 3 – robinchartier

Jebal Akdar trip

Jebal Akdar is a mountain that’s about 2 hours away from Muscat — the name translated means “Green Mountain.” At the base of the mountain there’s a police checkpoint because the drive is so steep that only 4 wheel drive vehicles are allowed. This did not make me a happy camper (literally!), but I just grabbed onto the armrest and tried to enjoy the view.

This doesn’t come close to showing how steep it was in some places. The road was beautiful and new, but it was so steep in parts that the car had a hard time finding a happy gear to be in and kept shifting back and forth. This is where Josh was wishing he had a stick shift.

Almost to the top . . . we passed several areas of construction as they are building guard walls along the cliffs and runaway vehicle ramps for the cars whose brakes go out as they are going downhill. I saw four different ones in various stages of progress, but none were completed yet. It didn’t make me too excited about the return trip . . .

69 degrees . . . woo! We haven’t seen 60s since leaving Monterey. We knew it would be cooler up on the mountain, but we were still surprised to feel the temperature change. It felt like 29 Palms in the fall — dry air, warm in the sun, cool in the shade.

All ready for camping — Calvin doesn’t have a headache, he’s just reading. He was absorbed in a new book and we had to yell at him to look up and see . . .

the donkeys. At the top of the mountain there were donkeys roaming everywhere. I thought we’d see goats, but I hadn’t expected to see wild packs of donkeys.

Eventually we pulled off the main road and started to drive even further into the middle of nowhere. On the way we passed other campers (Carter was impressed that the abaya wearing lady was helping to set up a tent). Legally you can camp anywhere in Oman. You can even pull off to the side of a highway and throw up a tent. We were heading somewhere a little further off the beaten path. We had GPS coordinates and were following friends who had camped in this particular spot before.

Once again, this was way steeper in real life than it looks in the photograph. There was one hill that Carter and I were very close to getting out and walking up instead of riding in the car.

After a lot of bumping around in the car we made it to our campsite by early afternoon. It had cooled to about 60 degrees at that elevation and Caleb was happy he had his blanket.

The boys set off looking for lizards, firewood, and other treasures.

Our camp — no one else around for as far as we could see

After the sun passed its peak, it began to cool off quickly. We pulled out sweatshirts and jackets, bundled up, and went for a hike.

The view from the top.

I was really glad I brought my Uggs. More on that later.

After coming back down the mountain it was time to add some layers. Camille ended up with 2 pairs of leggings, two shirts and a sweatshirt and a pair of my fuzzy socks on her legs when it was time for bed. Since it was already in the low 50s before dark we knew it was going to be a chilly night.

Josh cooked hamburgers on his propane grill and heated water so we could have coffee and we sat around the fire to eat. After dinner we had smores with marshmallows from the US! The ones here taste different because they don’t have gelatin in them — gelatin is usually made from pork bones. Then Josh broke out the guitar and played for us until it was time for bed.

waking up with the donkeys

It was a cold night. I would have been OK except the baby was having a bad night. She hasn’t had a bad one in months, but of course the one night we’re camping she’s up every 30 minutes, fussing and thrashing around. Which would have been manageable, except every time I had to sit up and pat her I had to unzip my sleeping bag and it would take a while to warm back up again. I tried to have her sleep with me, but there wasn’t room in the sleeping bag for the two of us so half my body was out in the freezing cold. I finally wrapped her in a blanket and sat up and rocked her to sleep and then tried to sleep sitting up. It felt a lot like all those nights we spent when she was a newborn and had reflux. Except back then I had Law and Order to keep me company and my teeth weren’t chattering. At 6am the kids started waking up so I handed the baby off to Josh and tried to get a little more beauty sleep.

But it clearly didn’t work. I took this picture when I woke up because I wanted to see how bad my “mango eyes” were and I didn’t have a mirror. They’re pretty puffy, but it’s hard to say how much of that is allergic reaction and how much is to be blamed on lack of sleep.

This charming guy was strolling around and through our camp all night, braying his little heart out. I don’t know if he was lost or alerting his friends that he had struck gold in the scavenging department, but his call was LOUD and FREQUENT.

The unrestful night certainly didn’t seem to bother her any.

Getting warm by the campfire.

Carter trying to wrap his massar.

Finally thawing out in front of the fire with my Via and a warm baby in my lap.

Calvin and the other boys were roasting anything they could put on a stick — hot dog buns, bananas, oranges, pistachios . . . Calvin is trying to convince me to taste his burnt up apple because he says it tastes like apple sauce.

Caleb took it upon himself to keep the fire going. Every time he saw it getting low, he’d find another big stick to lay across the top.

Then we packed up and it was time to hit the road — this is where we really needed the 4 wheel drive.

People live and farm up here on top of the mountain.

I didn’t know donkeys were scavengers, but these guys were chowing down on the trash that was spilling out of a dumpster.

A last look across the valley to the mountains we camped on before we headed down the steep slope. We made it home without incident and didn’t need the runaway vehicle ramps after all. Once again, something that was scary in my head turned out to be uneventful in real life.

It was a great camping trip and all the boys are already asking to go back. We’ll do it again, but I’m packing some extra blankets next time!

Grand Shopping

Istanbul is totally tourist friendly. See the free wifi sign? They have spots with free signal around the city. And if you look like you’re lost . . .

there are official people walking the streets, ready to assist. On the back of the blue shirts it says, “Ask me!” This woman stopped to make sure we knew where we were going and let the boys pet the kitten she was carrying.

We were on our way to the Grand Bazaar. It’s the oldest covered market in the world. It dates back to the 1400s. We weren’t there to do any serious shopping, just to look around.

There were stalls with carpets, lanterns, clothing, jewelry, ceramics — some things were really nice (expensive) and others were the trinkety junk you see in every tourist city.

There were crowds of people and since every third stall seemed to have the same items the browsing became tiresome quickly. On another day we tried to “cut through” the Grand Bazaar on our walk home, but because of the way that it winds around we ended up exiting further away from home than when we started.

We did come away with one treasure: these wooden tops/yo-yos.

Caleb wanted one really badly, but he played it cool while Josh agreed on the appropriate number of Turkish Lira for three of them. They settled on 5TL, about $3. They paid for themselves many times over during the rest of our trip as the boys could pull them out of their pockets and entertain themselves if they got tired of sightseeing. How do they work? You’re supposed to wrap the string around the base of the top and then flick your wrist as you drop it — if you do it correctly the top will spin on the ground attached to the string — it looks like walking a dog on a leash. I never got the hang of it, but the boys were doing tricks and catching the spinning top in their hands, Globetrotter style, by the time we came back from Turkey.

A Story of Four Continents

not quite as catchy as Charles Dickens, but not nearly as wordy either. Today marks six months that we’ve been in Oman. We’re now halfway through our year overseas. In October of last year we were making our final preparations for our move to Egypt, never imagining that a year later we would be living on an entirely different continent instead.

While traveling in Istanbul, Calvin pointed out that he has now traveled to four continents: North America (home), Africa (Egypt), Asia (Oman), and Europe (Istanbul). I added that not only have we been to four continents, but we’ve been to four continents this year. To further compress that, we left Africa on February 1st, spent the next two months in North America, moved to Asia on March 31st, and arrived in Europe on July 27th. A four continent tour in less than 6 months.

And now it’s time to start thinking about our next move. Oh my.

from princess to pauper

As I was carrying the puke-covered baby in her car seat down the narrow hallway, all I could think was, “how the mighty have fallen.” Four short hours before I was sitting in the Imperial Club lounge, feasting on scones with clotted cream, mini blueberry cheesecakes, and Pellegrino with lime. Then sadly, it was time to leave heaven on earth and move to the Holiday Inn Express.

It’s not too bad, except instead of a tub there’s a tiny corner shower with sliding doors so it’s like being trapped in a plastic box. Oh, and the water had to run for 10 minutes before it heated up enough to shower (I had it maxed out and it still was closer to barely warm than scalding hot). And as we headed to our room there were several rooms with the doors open, revealing people picnicking on the floor, playing games, and passed out asleep in a rumpled bed. It felt a little like walking into a crack house. Not that I’ve actually been to a crack house, but that’s totally what they look like on tv. Except on tv the people aren’t as happy or as well fed.

Anyway, the purpose of this hotel was purely functional. Just a home base to sleep at while we explore the biggest mall in the world (Dubai Mall), go skiing in the middle of the desert at the largest indoor ski slope in the Middle East, and visit the tallest building in the world, the Burj Kalifa.

So we head out to get dinner at the food court at Dubai Mall. Last time we were there we ate at Baja Fresh and Fat Burger, I bought a cute hat, and we were awed by its size and beauty. This time I had plans to visit Lush and Sephora and beyond that, I was open to whatever. This time the only thing we were awed by was the traffic. Today is the first day of Eid, the three day holiday marking the end of Ramadan, and everyone in UAE decided to celebrate with some shopping. Normally, not a big deal except that many things in the Middle East are not designed logically, and this parking structure was one of them.

We spent almost an hour trapped in underground parking garage hell, never finding a spot and never finding a way to go up or down a level. There were main lanes that just dead ended, requiring people to do many-pointed turns to get turned around to go back the other way. There were huge empty sections blocked off for valet parking. When Josh drives the parking gods always smile on him, but not today. I told him that we needed to go back to the hotel and grab a cab because our hotel wasn’t that far from the mall, but Josh doesn’t give up easily so I told him 10 more minutes before we surrender.

Just then we hear coughing and gagging from the back seat and then the dreaded splash, followed by “Camille threw up!” Since vomit trumps everything, we headed back to the hotel, I got the puke prize, and they grabbed a cab back. The water had barely gotten warm in the shower before I got a text saying they had arrived. (See? The taxi idea was way faster.) I got the puker cleaned up and then she threw up again on the floor so I got that cleaned up and now she’s sleeping on top of a towel.

On one hand I’m glad she was healthy while we were at Atlantis, on the other hand, if I were going to be trapped in the hotel room it would be a lot nicer to have the buffet and drink station down the hall, free wifi, and chocolates to help kill time. Oh, and that huge bathtub. I could be pretty happy trapped in that hotel room for a week at least.

A few hours before the puking started she was doing this: Coincidence?

***I spent the next 36 hours stuck in the hotel room and went through piles of towels, but at the 24 hour mark she stopped throwing up and was her perky, yelly self by morning. By then it was time to leave, but I was able to hit Lush and Sephora on our way out of town, so that part of the trip wasn’t a total bust.