Jazira Oasis

Today we went to the Jazira Oasis which means island of green. We had been to the oasis on one of our first trips out with the Emirates Natural History group and we had a good time. First we went and hiked part of the wadi leading up to a small dam. It is an easy hike and there are some cool plants and bugs to see. Like the water scorpion – which is not a scorpion it is a cool looking bug and the neat thing is although it lives completely in immersed in water it still breathes air. It runs a long spin out of its back side and keeps this above the water so it can breather. This is the part that makes it look like a scorpion. The next cool bug was the water bug it is a big one too. Now this bug does live under water but it has wings I guess it flies off to new pools if the one it is in dries up. It is quite large and kind of creepy.

Sadly as the wadi is drivable people come often and leave their trash behind. It is just annoying to see all the trash left behind but what can you do. Andrew did a bit of clean up, he pulled all the trash he found out of the water. We did not have bags to collect the trash but it was a noble idea to at least do some clean up.

Then we went on to the cool oasis and it has some very old buildings in it and it is very traditional. After exploring the oasis we went down to the gorge and the kids went swimming. I thought it was a bit cool so I had left the swimming suits in the car. Funny thing is I had also left the keys in the ignition of the car the whole time we were gone, so the car had sit in the parking lot of the Buraimi Hotel for 6 hours and no one touch it. The doors were open so all they had to do saw sit down and drive away. Andrew was great at spotting cool thing and he found a butterfly lying its eggs and a scorpion – a real one this time. Anyway the oasis is most spectacular for its variety of plants. They have mango trees, banana plants (lots of them too), orange trees, date palms (of course). Also it is on a cliff about a huge gorge. We go down to the bottom of the gorge to go swimming at the end of the trip.



Another neat thing was the destruction that was wrought upon Buraimi on Wednesday night’s storm. I guess the hail was quite fierce and lasted for 20 minutes. It did a lot of damage and though it is not a good think it sure was cool checking out all of the destruction. Brien the leader of the journeys said it was the closest he had gotten to a hurricane, water coming in from the Air Conditioner and water all over the floor. I had to remind him that a hurricane last for 8 to 12 hours but still in the middle of the desert to be hit by a storm like that is surprising.