We set off fairly early, but there was still heavy traffic as we passed through Sharjah. The queues of lorries has to be seen to be believed. As they are restricted to using the inside lane of the freeway, they end up in huge tail-backs.
Although most animals are fenced in alongside the main roads, they do escape! Instead of looking out for Emus and Kangaroos, now it's Goats and Camels.
As we headed into Ras-al-Khaimah, the mountains started to appear through the haze of dust that seems to plague the UAE. In RAK, as it's known, we turned east to head for the Gulf of Oman coast. Initially, the road passes through sandy desert with just a few acacia trees surviving here and there. Then after a ridge of rock, the road crosses a huge gravel plain. There is quite a bit of greenery there too and I guess fruit and vegetables are grown here. After passing a huge cement works, which are a common sight in the UAE, we started climbing up into the mountains. Despite the fact it is dry and stony, there are still villages and farms dotted around.
Somewhere in the mountains, we left RAK and entered Fujairah. Within the UAE, its difficult for visitors to know exactly which Emirate they are in. I think we've been to six out the seven Emirates this trip. I don't think we will go to Abu Dhabi, the missing Emirate, on this trip!
Our destination today was Snoopy Island. The name? The island resembles the classic 'Snoopy' pose of him lying on his back on top of this kennel! We were lucky enough to be able to use the Sandy Bay Hotel by the island. Business contacts of Siobhan got us a deal to use the facilities for the day. Thank you!
Once settled on our sun-loungers, Aaron and I went to investigate the Dive Shop. They had no boat available, but offered us kit to dive around Snoopy Island. We quickly sorted ourselves out and abandoned Lynn on the sun-lounger and went for an hours dive. Although the visibility wasn't too good, we did see a lot of colourful fish and corals. After some hunting around, I managed to find some Rays too. It wasn't the deepest dive I've ever done clocking a maximum depth of 6.8 metres!
Back on shore, we cleaned out kit and returned it to the Dive Shop and went to find some lunch at the pool bar. The menu wasn't very adventurous, all burgers and pizzas, but I got a free beer with my burger!
The hotel itself is quite nice, I'd like to stay there, but it's almost empty, lots of sun loungers and no guests. In all honesty, if we saw 20 guests today I'd be surprised. It must also cater for Russian guests as all signage is in Arabic, English and Russian. In fact the family in front of us were Russian.
After lunch, we decided to snorkel on the island and all three of us got kitted up and walked down to,the water. I thought there was a bit of seaweed washing up onto the beach, but as I got closer I could see it was heavy oil. I think about half the frontage of the hotel was affected. Staff later told us it happens regularly, it is due to ships flushing their tanks out in the Gulf of Oman. Absolutely criminal behaviour in my eyes. As we left the hotel, staff were out scraping sand into bags to dispose of it.
We managed, largely, to avoid the oil whilst we snorkelled. Once again, there was plenty to see underwater. I don't think I'd dive here again, there are better dive sites off shore. Snorkelling is probably the best way of seeing Snoopy Island.
After a two hour trip, we arrived back in Dubai along with the mad traffic!
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