Since we'd rented a car this past weekend, I figured instead of dealing with the flight I'd follow my friend's advice and do the 1.5 hour drive to the Omani border, cross over, and then turn right around and re-enter the UAE. Then I could stop by Hatta (which is right on the border) to grab lunch and shoot some guns on the Hatta Fort gun range. Sounds like a perfect way to spend a day off, or does it?
What my friend didn't tell me was how whack getting in and out of these contries can be. There's about a 15km no-man's land between the Oman and United Arab Emirates border checkpoints, and Allah forbid you didn't stop at the right office to get the right piece of paper with a stamp on it, cuz the border cops just love sending the gringos (I don't know the Arabic eqivilent, but I'm sure they have one) all the way back to the other side. Trust me, I got sent back twice.
Oh, then there's this little detail about Omani car insurance. Sure, it makes sense that my Dubai insurance isn't valid in Oman, but since I wasn't actually going to be driving into Oman, other than to drive past the checkpoint and make a u-turn, I wouldn't need insurance, right? Wrong. You can't get an entry stamp for Oman without buying a day's worth of auto insurance from the government office convieniently located right next to the customs and immigration desk. Bastards.
So, after much back and forth and many conversations had in broken English, I finally entered Oman, turned around, re-entered the UAE, went through even more back and forth between customs and immigration, and finally got my new visa. The cost of that stupid little stamp on my passport by the time you add up all the customs and insurance fees? 300Dhs, or about $85Cdn. But the story doesn't end there.
There isn't much to see on the drive back from Hatta to Dubai, just a few small towns, some camels, and a lot of sand. On one of the long stretches of highway I noticed ahead of me a big herd of goats that were wandering around on the road. As I approached I noticed that they were eating some vegetables that had fallen off a truck and weren't really interested in moving, no matter how much I honked my horn or slowly drove at them. So, I pulled my quality rental Renault off onto the shoulder to try to go around them. Bad idea. What I thought was gravel was actually soft sand, my front tires sank like stones and I was stuck in the middle of nowhere on a day that was pushing 44 degrees C. Farking fantastic.
After about a mile of walking in that opressive heat a local who was driving by actually picked me up and drove me to the next town where I could hire a tow truck, of course he was driving like such a maniac I actually wondered if my chances would've been better on foot. Anyway, 5 hours later I was back in Dubai with a very expensive stamp to show for it. Next time I'll take the bloody flight.