Hiking (and swimming) Wadi Shab

So first off. I am missing pictures for this post still. We have a Gopro for just this sort of adventure but we aren't very good at using technology to utilize the media we create on it. Matt took videos of the water portion of hiking Wadi Shab but I'm still working on getting the videos together with a program I can use to create a photo. Maybe I'll put a video or a link to a video but I need to get the journaling done! On to the stories!

This is Bimmah Sinkhole. The Arabic name, Hawiyyat Najm, means "deep well of the falling star". They used to believe it was made by a meteorite (but in reality it's just fallen limestone layers).

The tiny pedicure fish freaked out a couple of girls in our family.

Brigham has become a passionate cliff jumper. He's making his way around to the deeper spots to jump. You can see how truly giant this sinkhole is. I found some conflicting information on how deep the water is. at least 20 Meters but possible over 300ft in spots.

After our stop at the sinkhole we continued to Wadi Shab.  The parking place is full of goats which make the most human sounding screams I've ever heard. Goats to just "maaaa" in Oman. I need to post a video of the sound.

We took a boat across to the trail head for 5OR.

I saw some of what I love to call real life Oman on this hike. This man appeared to be fishing.  It's not culturally polite to photograph people here although the kids and I have been photographed on a few occasions. Still I don't want to offend. I tried unsuccessfully to get a couple of sly shots of the family who lives in this wadi driving their donkey loaded with the rushes they feed their animals and things like that. Very humble circumstances. 

Because we'd had that rain, the wadi looked completely different than when Matt has done this hike before. We had to hike through water where there isn't typically water. There were also one or two unsavory spots we didn't WANT to hike through where either there was lots of mud or some standing water. Thus we took a much more difficult hike than the standard Wadi Shab hike.

We were so grateful that there was water along the way where we normally wouldn't have been wet because it was hot! Admittedly, we were also not properly prepared with the amount of water and food we should've had.

Still, everyone did a great job! When it was time to stash our bags and swim they were SO excited. We swam in another ???I have no idea. Quite a ways. The girls wore snorkel vests or used a tube which was a blessing because Alena was definitely getting over-heated and low energy. I was glad she didn't have to swim the entire way. Brigham was INCREDIBLY disappointed when we reached our goal-the cave to the waterfall. The rains had washed an enormous palm tree into the slot you have to go through. We couldn't go through without swimming under a good ways and that wasn't safe enough for me to allow it. The boys all climbed up a rope and over but that would've been a lot of work for the girls and since we knew we had to hurry back out before our crew were too hungry to make it, we had to skip the climb. We'll be back another day but Eli counts every opportunity as possibly the last and we wanted him to get to do the cliff jumping waiting on the other side.

Here are some screen shots from our GoPro Videos. I have a lot to learn about using a GoPro and mostly about editing and dealing with enormous files. Anybody that had recommendations and resources feel free to send it.

They were troopers! HUNGRY troopers. We jumped in the car when we finished and drove 15 minutes to White Sand Beach to eat our watermelon and sandwiches. Since we were under a 5pm curfew we had a very short amount of time to be at that beautiful turquoise water but only a few of us really wanted to get in because of chaffing from the hike. I really am anxious to do the whole day again another time, maybe when it's just a little cooler in November.