Day 24 – Saturday 6 January 2018

This morning Austin slept in & we had to wake him at 8am, before a late breakfast & departure from Nizwa around 10am heading back to Abu Dhabi.  Again the scenery is stunning, huge rocky mountains dominating the skyline with the occasional group of new looking houses randomly planted on the rocky plain.  We pass by more herds of goats, see the occasional herd of camels, lots of small food crops, plantations of date palms & travel along at 120km/hr on superb, flat, mainly straight roads with streetlights down the middle for a couple of hours until the streetlights disappeared about 50km out of Al Ain.  The land changed to a flat rocky/sandy plain as far as the eye can see & there are larger trees & more scattered bushes appearing, with the occasional smattering of small sand dunes.  As we neared Al Ain the massive shape of Jebel Hafeet loomed out of the haze & loomed larger & larger as we got closer to the Oman/UAE border.  Another old Oman fort stood in the shelter of Jebel Hafeet next to the border.  It took us about an hour to get through both sets of border crossings then another 5 minutes we were in the outer suburbs of Al Ain.

After stopping for fuel on the road again (where we saw for the first time ever a drive through Burger King, so we had to buy some chips even though we were not really hungry) & the road system has improved again, with the drawback of speeding Emirates drivers.  The maximum speed limit is now 140km/hr & there are cars speeding past us going a lot, lot faster than that.  The road spreads out to 3 lanes dual carriageway & the sand hills on either side are large & reddish tinge.  Abu Dhabi is only another hour & a half away & the road keeps improving & getting wider as we approach Abu Dhabi.  It is good to arrive back at the apartment, Charles has been driving around 5 hours & has done another fabulous job of getting us all to Oman & back safely.  On top of all that he also whips up a great dinner for us tonight as well.  Another fabulous day.

The boys have been so good, Austin did ask a few times about how many more hours before we get home.  He also asked us some really good questions that needed a lot of clever explaining & checking Google for answers.  I also helped myself to a couple of bananas & Danish pastries from breakfast so the boys would have some snacks.