Jan's visit Volume 2

There are two types of people. The first ones like “passive relaxation” which is supposed to make you body and mind rest by doing nothing or only by doing little physical and mental demanding activities. I found out that this just doesn’t work for me. After a day of doing nothing or little I feel even more tired physically and with feeling of wasted day in my mind.

Therefore I belong to the other group of people who like “active relaxation” which makes your body even more tired and your mind even more focused, but all this in a different way than in the everyday office life. So you return back refreshed for duty after days of not sitting on a chair and not thinking about who you have to chase today! Not mentioning that you can spend couple of hours showing pictures to your colleagues and have an additional break ;)

My brother Jan has the same opinion about resting, so when I made him come to visit me to UAE by giving him flight ticket voucher for Christmas, we had to get busy J And in UAE and Oman there plenty of places where to “relax”!!

So on Wednesday 8 of September I left Doha office at noon, quickly finished packing my 32 kilo bag full of climbing, kiting and outdoor gear and flew to Dubai. I almost met Jan in Dubai airport, because we landed both there at 6pm, but in different terminals and with different following destinations. He continued to Muscat by plane and I took my car from the airport, filled it with even more gear that was left in my Dubai apartment and headed to Muscat by road to pick him up J We finally met at 4am at Muscat airport and our 13 days pumped with adventure up to the edge could begin!!

First thing on the program was climbing and hiking in Wadi Bani Auf with famous Little & Big Snake canyons. Because there were public Islamic holidays together with weekend, so my friends from UAE could join us. But on Thursday we were there only with Robin, my friend from Qatar who was by chance on business trip in UAE. After only three hours of sleep we went up the wadi, refreshed ourselves in Little Snake canyon pools and headed up for La Gorgette rock climbing area for some afternoon stretching. Nicely tired we went back to Little Snake campsite and waited for the rest of the expedition with a can of cold one.

They arrived at 2am so after a while whole team was already gearing up for Friday action – Big Snake Via Ferrata with five Tyrolean crossings 100m over the canyon bottom.

It started very well when Jaro dropped his pulley down to the canyon at the first crossing, but fortunately Jan brought one more from Czech. So we had to continue 8 people with one pulley. At least we had more time for enjoying the stunning scenery below J Ehm…not that all of us welcomed this opportunity. After we finished Robin told me that he was whole way scared to death and that he hates heights. If this was true he was really brave, because we didn’t notice. But we all had a great fun day of riding the cables J

After the evening in typical camping fashion “All inclusive” with wadi Jacuzzi pools, three more people joined us and we drove back up to do the famous Big Snake canyon trek. Snake canyon is about 5 kilometers long, narrow and deep gorge with a stream flowing between huge boulders and creating pools. The trek goes simply at the bottom of the canyon following the current, jumping boulders and swimming through deep pools, even caverns!!

The fun part about the trek is, that once you jump down from the first boulder down to the pool at the beginning on the canyon, there is no way back and the only way out is the other canyon’s end J

So our group of 11 people headed into the more difficult version of the trek where you need a rope to climb down one section. And just at the start everything what we heard about the Snake Canyon’s beauty and the trek attractivity came true. Swimming in and jumping into crystal clear pools, fun climbing dry waterfalls and boulder formations or warming up lying on sun heated stones. Awesome!! For some of us it was even more thrilling because of no climbing background, but it was certainly outbalanced by the rest. But that just happened when somebody goes somewhere with me J

Only few people stayed until Sunday, so we went for climbing again to La Gorgette. Nice 6c climbing in the shade made a pleasant point after a relaxing weekend. And me with Jan, we moved on J

Around 4pm we drove up the winding dirt track out of the Snake Canyon up to the mountain pass and then down through the night desert to our new destination Masirah Island, Omani kitesurfing paradise. We arrived around midnight to the ferry port and slept hidden from wind behind the car. Good signJ But what was not a good sign was a crowd of cars trying, like animals squeeze onto the first morning ferry. We tried also, but we were not experienced in “vehicle mob” behavior, so we missed. Bit smarter and more aggressive we luckily fit onto the second which came right after the first, so after 2 hours on the boat we stayed at noon at the beach.

Wind was blowing 20 knots, but was quite gusty. We tried anyway, but soon we packed up and came looking for a Masirah kite camp. We found it easily and after a quick discovery that Alex, the camp’s owner, confiscated the best kite beach on the Island, we paid his fee and concentrated fully on kiting.

And that’s how it went for next three days. Sleep under the sky full of stars behind camp wind barrier, quick breakfast and at 8am already pumping kites. Beautiful strong wind until dawn, still a bit gusty but nothing major, flat and shallow water for kilometers rounded by sand banks. Perfect playground!!

Jan demonstrated that kite is like bicycle and you don’t forget it not even after a year of not practicing and was bravely riding on his own and successfully fighting the strong wind. And me? I was in heaven!! Doing bigger, higher and longer jumps, practicing grabs and other tricks…having loads of fun!! We were leaving tired, sun burnt, scratched everywhere, but happy and so relaxedJ

We cleared 1000km to Dubai in 8 hours, so the next day we could have met Jaro and company on my secret Yas Island kite beach. There was not much wind, but enough for 60kg Jan to have a couple of runs. “So much easier in this kind of wind!! Everything works by itself” happily added Jan when we were rounding on Yas leisure drive. It was nice to be back on Yas after a while and see that after one year from official completion date, it is really getting finished, working, nice and useful!!

Time was flying fast and we had so much energy left, so on Sunday early morning we drove to Wadi Tawiyan to climb famous route Jebel Jebel (60m, 6b). Nice, exposed and sharp climb, but I would rate “attractivity-wise” higher one double pitch overhung 6a just next J Question of personal tastes!!

After that we moved to dry Wadi Bih as last year. This time it was one month later, so it was quite pleasant climate down there. We did one easy 90m traditional route, for Jan to get taste of real trad climbing and drove back up to the pass where there was 10 degrees colder and camped. Grill, chairs, cold beer, star-lid sky…UAE classic J The next day we did one 3 pitch 6b+ sport route “Generous Americans” and Jan led another long traditional route on 90m crag. Awesome relaxing two days high on the cliffs…

Unfortunately our loyal and reliable towing car provider Rune, got problem with his vehicle, so we had to shift our UAE desert trip to the last possible day and hope that Asian engineers keep their promises. So instead we made a backup plan and went to Aquaventure waterpark and Lost Chambers. This was also one of the activities which was for a long time available to me, but I’ve somehow never found time to go J We have not expected anything, but after 5 hours flew by we had to admit that that riding on a tube through lazy rivers, rapids, slides and spiral chutes was superb fun. And with a break in dark aquarium exhibition Lost Chambers we went nicely tired home and enjoyed a cold beer looking on shiny Dubai towers.

The last day we were lucky enough and did what we planned, the UAE crown free time activity, quadbiking in the Empty Quarter of the Great Arabian desert. We rented two 700cc Yamaha Raptors in Abu Dhabi and drove another 200km to the desert for 5 hours of sandy fun.

As a motorbike rider Jan quickly got used to motorbike on four wheels and tricky shifty dune terrain, so we could challenge the highest dunes in the area including famous Moreeb dune. “Amazing point after even more amazing holiday” sighted Jan on the top of the dune overlooking Moreeb. I had to agree. We watched sunset coming and dunes casting shadow over our second vacations in UAE.

I had to fly back to Qatar at 2am to be back at work at 7am and Jan stayed one day more, drove by metro to the tallest building in the world, saw Dubai from 134^th floor and flew back home also. We were sad that it is over, but happy about that everything went even beyond expectations and most importantly relaxed despite being in action every day of those two weeks…and also full of plans how to continue with our new tradition of holidays in adventure style, because that is our way to be J