Wednesday 26 November 2008

Oman: saving the planet?

Our neighbours departed just after sunrise leaving behind the most hideous mess. Not to worry, we will clear it up. Don’t mind at all. No, really, I enjoy wallowing in other people’s filth. The fish, crabs, turtles, goats, donkeys and camels don’t mind being poisoned and choking on plastic and bits of foil either. The red wax wrappers from those little cheeses are particularly tasty to the birds and they give the beach a bit of colour as well. Jolly well done, lads. Do come again.

There was a splendid sense of solitude in the morning with only a couple of enormous dragonflies and a bird pecking on a bit of bread for company. In the distance, we noticed that the beach seemed to be wriggling. Through binoculars we watched hundreds of crabs attempting to pierce the black rubbery skin of a fish with their claws without success.

The sea looked like cappuccino coffee – brown with bits of white foam from the crashing waves. Unfortunately the smell that normally accompanies the red tide started to become apparent in short wafts. We struck camp after lunch as the sun hid behind a thick layer of cloud settling over the mountains.

Still, no such thing as a bad camping trip.

4 comments:

Jet Driver said...

Very nice blog

Have been meaning to vent about the state that people are leaving Tiwi and other beaches in.

Keep it up!

Mr. Steve said...

Thanks. I'd like to vent more, but I'm still trying to be polite.

Anonymous said...

It's not just the state people are leaving the beaches (and everywhere else) in, it's also the ocean of rubbish dropped overboard by fishermen, which washes ashore all along the coast. Beaches a long way further down the east coast (which only Europeans tend to go to) pick up zero camping rubbish but are slowly getting buried under plastic water and engine oil bottles, and fishing floats. I think I'm going to start my own blog so that I can rant properly about the ignorant and rapid destruction of this country's recently-pristine natural environment.

I also want to rant about people using beaches at low tide as highways, happily speeding past camping kids playing in the sand at over 100kph. I kid you not. Mostly bedu, but a lot of the tour campanies (Mark, Zahara etc) are as bad. What a buch of @ssholes.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and what about the slow burial under piles of garbage of the dune valleys through the Wahiba Sands?