Thou Shalt (Nearly) Not Pass

Today was a rather chaotic day and quite tiring.

It started with breakfast at the hotel, followed by a walk along the Bur Dubai waterfront. We were inclined to rent a boat for an hour or so’s cruise up and down Dubai Creek, but Eloïse was intent on walking, so that scuppered that plan.

We had to check out by noon, so we headed back to the hotel and grabbed a drink in the downstairs café. I read a copy of Gulf News while we relaxed.

After checking out, we took a taxi to the airport, but it was impossible to explain to our driver — who came from a part of Pakistan close to the border with Afghanistan — that we didn’t want to fly anywhere; merely go to the car rental area to rent a car.

Eventually, we enlisted the help of a third party, who told our driver to take us down to the arrivals area, where we already suspected we needed to be.

Once there, however, locating the Thrifty desk proved awkward. It turned out that it was in the secure, one-way only area for arriving passengers.

Undeterred, we pushed our trolley full of luggage the wrong way into the terminal and soon found the Thrifty desk.

We were due to get a Nissan Pathfinder, but they didn’t have one, so we were upgraded to a Mitsubishi Pajero. (I wonder, do car rental companies ever actually supply the car that you booked?)

The next surprise, slightly less pleasant, was that Thrifty allows its cars to be taken into Oman via only one border crossing. “Don’t use the Muscat crossing; please use only the Hatta crossing”, we were told. Sarah and I looked at each other and wondered how on earth we might use the Muscat crossing, since Muscat is nowhere near the border with the UAE!

The woman assistant then confessed that she had never been to Oman, so we pulled out a map of the UAE and Oman and showed her where Muscat was. There was little more she could say, other than that this was the information she had been given and that she couldn’t tell us any more than that.

Once we looked for Hatta on the map, we saw to our relief that it was the crossing that we intended to take, anyway. It seems that Thrifty will no longer sell you insurance for Oman and that you have to purchase it at the border instead. Apparently, only the border stop at Hatta allows this.

We were driven to the site of our car, where I loaded the bags and Sarah installed Eloïse’s car seat. After asking for directions to Oman, we were on our way. The question’s not as silly as it sounds, as there aren’t so many roads out here. After two right turns, it was more or less a straight line eastwards for the next couple of hours.

Eloïse soon nodded off, so we turned on the radio and found some groovy Arabic music. After about fifteen minutes of driving, the urban sprawl thinned out, replaced by scrub bushes and sand.

Dunes rose up on either side of us and camels appeared at the side of the road; an altogether more Arabian allure engulfed us.

After a little more than 100 km, we reached the border with Oman. No-one was stopping us on the UAE side, so we drove on into the first couple of kilometres of Oman and stopped first at the car inspection point, then at passport control there. As expected, we were told we would need to park our car and come inside the building to purchase visas for Oman.

Once inside, we were relieved to see a cash dispenser and an insurance company. We had a little more than AED 150 (dirhams) on us, but this had not been enough to purchase the three weeks of insurance that we needed at the last two roadside insurance companies we had seen as we had approached the border. We had been told there was a cash dispenser at the border, however, so we hadn’t been overly concerned.

Things then took a turn for the worse.

Firstly, we couldn’t get our Omani visas, because we had not received an exit visa from the UAE. We would have to go back, explaining to the Omani exit station and the Emirati entry station on the way that we actually wanted to be going the other way.

Worse, however, was that the cash dispenser would accept only Visa credit cards. It wasn’t much of a cash dispenser at all, really.

Worse yet, however, was that this insurance company, like the two before it, would not accept credit cards, so we didn’t have enough money to insure it for the three weeks we’ll be in Oman. The only option that remained, was to purchase just a week’s worth of insurance and then get the car reinsured when it lapses.

Even that option, however, didn’t leave enough money to purchase our visas, but the border official kindly offered to waive the fee.

So, we got back in the car and drove back to the UAE to get an exit stamp. At the entry station, we explained our predicament to the official and he told us there was a cash dispenser at a bank in Hatta, so we drove the ten or so kilometres to find it.

Sure enough, there was a cash dispenser inside the bank, so we took out 500 dirhams and headed back to Oman, stopping for a UAE exit stamp on the way.

Back on the Omani side, our car was reinspected, our insurance was purchased, the border official was true to his word and gave us free visas, and that was pretty much that. Just one checkpoint remained, where we handed in the form to say that our car had been inspected and we were then free to speed on across Oman.

To be fair to all of the border officials, everyone was very understanding and let us pass through very quickly, even when we were reentering the UAE without ever having been stamped out of the UAE or into Oman.

Incidentally, we met an Irishman at the border control post who had found himself in the same predicament a few hours earlier. Unfortunately for him, he had not found out about the cash dispenser in Hatta and thus had had to drive back the entire way to Dubai to withdraw cash! Until we found out about the bank in Hatta, we depressingly envisioned ourselves having to make the same journey.

So, that little escapade cost us close to a couple of hours of our day. On the other hand, we were consoled by the knowledge that it could have turned out a lot worse. Our ill-advised crossing to Ukraine from Slovakia last year, for example, could have been a lot messier. Still, we also learned to keep plenty of ready cash on us when crossing a non-EU border. No two are the same and you just can’t predict what might happen to you.

The Pajero, by the way, drives well enough, but it has an exceedingly annoying chime that sounds when the car is taken over the 120 kmh mark. It’s there to keep your speed within legal bounds, but all it does is irritate one. I can’t believe anyone would voluntarily purchase a car with such a device.

The drive on the Omani side wasn’t terribly interesting, I have to say. It was completely flat, the road was straight and in good condition, and there was hardly any other traffic.

Houses and occasional shops lined the dead straight road, which never actually blossomed into a town. It reminded be of strip-mall lined America, and I almost expected a tall neon McDonald’s sign to loom up at the end of each row of buildings.

Finally, just after 18:00 and just before sunset, we pulled into Sohar, our stop for the night, and soon located the Sohar Beach Hotel.

It’s lush here, and there’s a nice-looking beach right behind the hotel. It’s quite humid as well, so the overall impression prompts us to think of Hawaii.

We were all very tired after the rigours of the day, so we stayed at the hotel for dinner. I had a very tasty traditional Omani fish curry, featuring a local fish, the hamour.

Tomorrow, we hope to be up early enough to catch the town’s fish market.

Oman brings Eloïse’s total number of countries visited to fourteen, which isn’t bad for a girl who’s not yet turned two.