Sunday Drive!

So, we decided to drive to Abu Dhabi UAE instead of flying just for adventure's sake. Everyone who has driven to Dubai said that the drive was four hours at most. Dubai is the north Emirate so we decided to cut through the Al Buraimi border and the Al Lain Emirate to get to Abu Dhabi which looked like the speedier option. Hmph we left home at 9.30am and we got to our destination at 3pm. Talk about a never-ending drive! However I'm very glad we had done it. Though we drove through sandy, rocky and rugged hilly desert I was amazed even more of the wealth in these parts. The immaculate highway took us all the way to Abu Dhabi no worries. And passing through Al Lain you can see they are a fairly developed Emirate. It was a small city but they had everything you could think of. We knew we were in Abu Dhabi when the driving got even worse. Though the highway in Abu Dhabi was wide with a 100km speed limit there were cars whizzing past at 160km or more. Oh and my favourite part is when they speed right up to your tail that you think they're running into you and then at the last second they swerve around you and keep on speeding past. I always said when we got here that the drivers here treat the high way like a Playstation rally game. They swerve around other cars like its nothing and then they tailgate each other at 120km its just plain scary. Another awesome part is they don't indicate so they'll just drift into your lane like you don't exist. Two weeks ago we had a near accident due to this reason. The statistics came out for Oman that last month alone there were 216 accidents, 26 deaths and more injuries.
After completing our task in Abu Dhabi we drove back which took us 5 hours give or take 20 minutes at the border of trying to figure out why we were being charged to leave UAE. Hullo its their policy and when finally they brought over an English speaking officer he nicely explained that it was protocol and everyone pays to exit. lol. I thought it was hilarious that the guys were arguing about it. Anyhow we had to stop at three posts to re-enter Oman. We got back at midnite exactly and we had driven 1019 km all day. Fantastic indeed though our party agreed to fly next time. Nevertheless it was an interesting Sunday drive.

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