Out of Town Excursion

We had our first out of town experience this past weekend. We decided to take a trip to a city called Nizwa about 2 hours away. First thing to remember, it is the middle of Ramadan, so despite the fact that it is 100 degrees outside, we are not supposed to be drinking or eating in pulic. On the drive out to Nizwa, we had to drink our waters in secret. We had to look around and make sure no cars were driving by, and then take a quick swig before someone saw us. If you didn't know any better, you would have thought we were trying to sneak a drink of liquor or something. It was all mildly amusing. Anyway, once we got to Nizwa, we went to this nice little souk, or flea market, where they were selling all sorts of fruits and vegetables, along with Omani handiwork. If you want to get an Omani dagger or coffee pot, this is the place to go. After the souk, we decided to go up into the mountains a little bit. It sounded like a benign little adventure, but little did we know. We started going up this dirt road where we saw a big water truck coming down. If a water truck can navigate these roads, our car can surely handle it, right? We have always heard that everywhere in Oman, no matter how small the town or how remote, they always have electricity and water. Well, I think we proved it on this trip. As you can see in the picture, even the dirt roads have navigation signs! And that water truck we saw . . .It had a rough drive because, as far as we found, the roads only got rougher and smaller and more uphill. We ended up driving through a couple of tiny towns. (And when I say tiny, I mean about 3 or 4 stone houses total.) One of the towns had a bunch of children playing outside, and they were definitely not used to seeing people like us driving through. They gathered around the car waving, while we tried our best to say hello in Arabic. (probably unsucessfully seeing the looks on their faces.) We managed to make our way to the tops of the mountains, only to find out that the way down the mountain was back the way we came. It was an interesting little adventure, but from now on, I am shooting for more adventures with blacktop roads, instead of the ones we were driving on!