Arroyo, valley, channel--a wadi by by a different name!

So, my last post was the first half of our Friday trip. We had reached our southern destination on the coast, Sur, and had turned around to go back home. Not really having much choice, we went back the same way we came, knowing we had missed a few sights along the way.

When we stopped to take pictures of the camel (shown at the end of my last post), we noticed a small cluster of homes off the road in the background. Did you ever read the children's book, "Mr. Pine's Purple House?" It was written by Leonard P. Kessler and published in 1965 (I'm dating myself now--my mom must have purchased it right after it came out!). Here is a quote from the beginning of the book:

 Mr. Pine lived on Vine Street in a little white house. "A white house is fine," said Mr. Pine, "but there are FIFTY white houses all in a line on Vine Street. How can I tell which house is mine?" 

Not to ruin the story for any of you grown-ups out there, but Mr. Pine eventually painted his house purple to differentiate it from all the others, which led to even more changes in the neighborhood. I immediately thought of this book when I saw these houses. Can you tell why I am including this picture?

The houses are all virtually the same, except there is the yellow-green one, and
if you look way down the block, you can see the pink one!

After seeing the dam, the camel, the goats, the beach--we thought we were ready to go home. We were passing a wadi we had seen on the way down, and we pulled over for a better shot at it with the camera. (We were going so fast, I missed the water the first time. Don's race-car driving with no stopping had become a minor point of contention, but like a good husband, he's a quick learner!) Don got out of the car and took the pictures below of some old buildings in the village of Tiwi.

We were intrigued by the  water, so we exited the highway and drove down to the village. The road was under construction, and I was a little apprehensive, but we were rewarded by this view of the "mushroom rock" at low tide:

We parked the car and went to investigate what the guys with the boats were doing and why all the people were down here. We discovered there was a state park of sorts called the Wadi Shab. There was a big group having a cookout, the boats were transportation across the water so you could trek back through the wadi to the waterfalls.

Large group cooking out on back left of picture. These mountains are huge--I'm not sure the picture does it justice!

Rules of the Wadi Shab

Being the adventurous tourist as always, Don got us on a boat to cross the river.

This is a close-up of the driver of our boat.

 We took off across the water, and started our climb back into the mountains. Just for the record, I made the climb just fine! I took pictures of Don when we got to the first set of waterfalls--I just didn't go out to the waterfalls! I couldn't believe how many people were out there that afternoon.

See the young men in traditional dress that we rode the boat over with? 

Beautiful vegetation at the base of the mountain, watered by the wadi.

I was glad they had reinforced some parts of the rock so that there was usually some solid footing. We are past the halfway mark of our trek here.

Just around the bend beyond our sight is a small pool where lots of people were swimming.

Don at the first waterfall.

Walking back to the boat.

A boat full of young Omani girls getting out as we were heading back to ride to the other side.
Like typical teenage girls, they were giggling and talking non-stop!

 We headed back after getting to just the first set of waterfalls because the boats stopped running at 5:30 and we didn't want to get left behind. However, we know that we want to go back and hike that extra 30 or 45 minutes even farther back to see more waterfalls where they hold cliff-diving competitions! I'll just have to save that for another blog--probably next winter as I surely wouldn't make this trek in the heat of summer!