Monsoon Weekend, Part 2 of 3

As if being on a bus for 15 hours wasn't enough, we spent the rest of the day driving from Salalah towards, well, wherever. We were on a mission to find waves good enough to surf, and that proved to be a bit difficult because of the strong winds messing up the ocean. The initial plan was to find a spot in Mirbat- about 70kms away from Salalah, but unfortunately, the only spot we managed to find was a lunch break spot just outside of the village. The village was quite charming, looking like it was left behind by the rest of the world, but not badly so. There were goats walking around, little boys running to the mosque for prayers, fishing boats waiting for the next trip and old worn out houses that still refused to succumb to age and weather. We had our lunch in what looked like an old park with gazebos strategically placed to have good views of the sea.

Convenient

By that time, the Yaris' battery had already died twice, and I've had to help push the poor little thing, and we were already thinking of heading back to Salalah to return it for a proper one. That was probably the most practical of our ideas. We went from that to thinking we should just forget surfing and go into a wadi. With the Yaris- sucky battery and all. Obviously, that was probably the stupidest idea. Good thing we're quite sensible, and we decided to go with the in-between idea- that we should just drive on in hopes of finding decent waves before we reach the end of the highway. (Ok, I really don't know if that was sensible, but we survived, and so did the Yaris.)

Onward then. We tried to recall Mr. Director's suggestion and we agreed that it sounded very much like Hasik- which we found on the map, and was really at the end of the highway. The Omanis we asked directions from looked quite surprised that we were intending to go to Hasik, and by their hand motions, it did seem very far indeed. More than an hour's worth of driving, it looked like. Didn't care though. It was a nice drive, with camels taking over the road every now and then, and goats and cows joining in the parade. We thought it would be wise to load up on petrol, so decided to stop at the next station on the way. The map indicated that there would be one at a town called Sadh, so we went in that direction. We asked the local guys there where the petrol station is and they pointed us towards the end of town. We got confused because it looked like we reached the end, and we still didn't find anything that looked like a station. A nice guy volunteered to walk us to where it is, and sure enough, it was at the end of town, where we just were, but instead of your regular station, it was an empty lot with barrels and a small wooden board with "Petrol" written on it, along with a phone number. We were worried at first, but the guy assured us that they did have proper petrol and all we need to do was cough up 3 riyals and they'd pump it in to the Yaris with a makeshift hose that you had to blow into at first for the petrol to come up. Worked well enough.

This one's actually Hasik's station.
We were too amazed at the one in Sadh that we forgot to take a photo

We didn't make it to Hasik that day because we chanced upon a nice beach that looked like it had decent enough waves, and the sun was already setting by that time, so we decided to set up camp there. There was a water tower nearby, with a lamp, so that was convenient. At least, even with the thick cloud cover, we still had a bit of light. Fortunate, because we forgot to bring firewood for a bonfire.

Unfortunately for Dave (and the very curious Omani teen who kept coming back to see if the surfer dude finally managed to catch a wave), once the sun disappeared, the winds came back in full force and the conditions were just all wrong for surfing. He came back to shore and we just worked on getting the tent to stay put. After a slightly creepy visit from a camel, we sat down for some dinner, hoping for better waves in the morning.

One of these guys came to check on us