The next day I woke up and my stomach was sick. I'll spare you the details, but it was diarrhea. I borrowed some Immodium from Adam because I'd left mine at the hotel. Then it was off to the desert!!! Since it was hot I wore my Omani housedress over shorts and a t-shirt. The drivers went crazy! They kept telling me how wonderful and beautiful I looked in thobe Dhofari. They got even more effusive when the sand kicked up and I put the headscarf across my face. I felt a bit odd. Several guys were wearing wazars, but that didn't solicit comments.
There was a long ride along dirt/rock roads, and a stop to pick up geodes! That was fun. And there was a cold front or something because it only got up to 45C. Then we tried to get to our campsite. The site was actually inside the desert, so we had to take the 4WD vehicles over real sand dunes. No roads, no little tiny dunes, real dunes. Well, we had 7 vehicles, and all of us managed to get stuck at one point or another. I was lucky – I got to ride in the vehicle while the best driver took it over the big dune. It was freaking awesome! We were bouncing around all over and stuff was falling out of the back into the back seat area. It was great! Then I had a view from halfway up the dune of the other vehicles. Anyway, it took us a few hours to get everyone unstuck and over the first big dune. It was hilarious to watch too.
So we get to our camp site an hour or two before dark and start setting up tents. The program bought 4 special tents just for us girls – we referred to them as the “bint tents.” There were 4 bint tents and 12 girls, so it worked out well. All the bint tents were on one side of camp, the boys' tents on the other, and the drivers slept over by the boys. We were supposed to have a cook-out meal, but it was late by this time so 2 drivers went back to town and brought food back. It's very easy to accommodate vegetarians in Oman, and we had 4-5 on our trip. The food was vegetarian something-or-other, chicken something-or-other, and diced up camel meat. The camel wasn't bad. It was a bit gamey and tough. And fatty. But the taste/flavor was good. It's darker than chicken, but not as dark as something like beef. Maybe like a really dark piece of chicken thigh.
Anyway, we had fun and climbed dunes and sang songs (Sam brought his guitar) and chatted. It was still pretty hot, but Kristen and I slept in our tent because we wanted to sleep in very little clothing. We did keep the flap open, but it was dark so we wouldn't offend the drivers. Most of the girls and half the guys slept outside - we had little mattresses and pillows. And it was very sandy. You are out in the middle of lots of sand, with wind, and sand gets everywhere. It was even stuck in my teeth. Let me just leave it at that.
The next day, I got up early and my stomach was a bit upset. Still okay though. By the time we left, though, one of the peer facilitators was puking. Next we went to Ubar. It's the old trade city (village) that was found by satellites a few years back. Got pics.
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