Beach Days

When we told the kids about moving to Muscat, we told them about things like going on new adventures, new friends, and how close we would live to the beach.  We do, in fact, live a 5 minute drive from the beach.

About any Saturday morning that has no other plans; we take the boys to the Shatti beach.  It is pretty empty in the morning.  There are usually some men that have waded into the water to fish.  There are also boats going to and fro out in the water.  There may be a family or two enjoying the beach, but that is about it.  I like going when not many people are there because parking is easy and I don’t have to worry about offending too many people by being in a bathing suit.  The local ladies aren’t in bathing suits at the beach.

View of one side of Muscat from the beach

One morning, we watched men bringing in their nets of fish and transferring the fish into the trucks.

The beach there has never had any waves any time we’ve come.  I hear that we will have to go a good bit farther south to find waves if Stephen were to want to try surfing again.  This beach also has incredibly soft, dark sand.  It is very fine, but it can get hot due to its color.  This beach does have some seaweed.  It’s usually clumped together in the water where you can avoid it, but it is sometimes on the beach.  Last time we went, there was no seaweed to be seen, so who knows!

Playing in our boat.  Someone should tell J there's no standing in little boats.

One Friday evening we were invited by some friends to join them at the Wave beach.  The Wave is an eating, shopping, and living compound about 15-30 minutes away from us depending on traffic.  We know many families that live there so we were able to see a few of them while we were enjoying the beach.  There were lots of people using the beach, but I hear that would be the case at any of the beaches come evening time.

The Wave beach with kids playing frisbee

The kids riding the waves in inflatable boats.

J as sand man

J getting washed off after being sand man and E chasing crabs.

The Wave beach has the same sand as the Shatti beach, but they had more waves.  Not many large waves, but 1-2 foot rolling waves.  The waves are broken up along sections of the beach by large piles of rocks.

Now that we have our beach toys, we will probably start taking them occasionally for sand castle building.  The boys can spend hours doing that.  We also have my stand up paddle board that will be great at the Shatti beach thanks to its lack of waves (if we can ever get the SUP inflated).  And we bought a little inflatable boat that holds 3 people.  The boys love riding the waves in it.  They had so much fun with it plus another similar boat while at the Wave.

While at beaches we’ve also examined shells, watched and tried to catch crabs, played with Frisbees, and snacked.  The boys do love our beach days!