Travel
Oman - really Wild Wadis by Scott and Nori Brixen
My wife still hasn’t caught on to one of my greatest deceptions: I find places and activities that I really want to experience and then I pitch them as ‘something the kids will really enjoy’. Of course, it helps that my kids are all boys and that I have childlike desires. What Scott likes, the boys will like, she thinks - and in general, that’s accurate. Still, I was surprised that she wasn’t more heavily revising my plans to visit a half-dozen wadis during our Oman/UAE trip. So what exactly is a wadi? It’s a steepsided canyon carved by a seasonal (or ephemeral) river. In Spanish-speaking countries, it’s an arroyo. In English, gulley, gorge or gulch probably comes closest. When heavy rain falls on mountainous, parched lands, the water rushes down violently, gouging deep and tortuous ravines. And then the water is gone, or mostly gone, until the next time. Except in Dubai, at the mammoth “Wild Wadi” waterpark, where an eco-unconscious deluge of water keeps the slides lubricated and the skin on your back. With more than 30 rides, including the terrifying “Jumeirah Sceirah”, Wild Wadi is one of the world’s biggest and most diverse waterparks. And I love waterparks.
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December 2017/January 2018
Unfortunately, we had only a few days in Dubai and Nori rightly pointed out that “the kids can to go waterparks anywhere”. So on to Oman! The Al Hajar Mountains rise to as high as 3000 metres within 50-100kms of the Gulf of Oman. While the capital, Muscat, receives as little as 4 inches of precipitation a year (Portland, Oregon gets 44!), the mountains get 2-4 times that, with half of it falling in the winter months of December to April. That makes Oman wadi country, and these wadis are really wild. In Dubai, Wild Wadi has a ride called “Flood River”. In Oman, a flash flood is the chief risk of hiking, or driving up, a wadi. If it starts to rain, the guidebooks advise, get out or up.
EXPAT LIFE in Thailand
After nearly two hours of driving through some of the most dry, cracked and beaten landscapes on earth, I needed some green. But I knew that Wadi Shab was a full-day activity, so we zoomed right over the bridge that spans its lower reaches and continued a few kilometres more to Wadi Tiwi. With adolescent glee I piloted our Land Cruiser up a twisting, narrowing ribbon of asphalt flanked by palm trees and reed-lined pools. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long. We barely squeezed between the homes of a very poor looking village and then the road just disintegrated. If we had parked the car and hiked further up the canyon, I’m sure the scenery would have been much more impressive. But it was already very pretty and I knew that the boys needed some activity. So we changed into our swimming gear and started exploring the pools beneath the village (I know what you’re thinking, but I tried not to think about it). Climbing boulders, swimming against the mild current, bird spotting and admiring the orange-red canyon walls - it was great fun (despite the slimy algae) and a tantalising taste of what was to come. That night we slept in Sur, the largest city in eastern Oman. The next morning we drove the 40 minutes back to the Bridge Over the Wadi Shab (sorry, I lived in Thailand too long).
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