The plan was to travel to Georgia. Everything was booked (hotels, Flight tickets, car rental...). The day before to leave, I still hadn't receive my Exit re-entry visa, and Iwas informed by my office that there was a problem with my papers in immigration. I tried sorting this out on Thursday...went to innigratiob, mourour (police station). It could not be solved immediatly. The flight being planned fot Friday 29 morning, no other choice than to cancel all the bookings, and wait the next opening of administrative offices on Sunday 31. Sunday 31, it was raining a lot, and our adminitrative assistant didn't show up. it was postponed to Monday. being ramadan, noyhing happen in the morning...we finally went back to mourour on sunday around 1, and the problem was fixed. I waited confirmation of the issuance of my exit visa to start rebooking the whole trip in Georgia. got the confirmation around 20:00. however, for unknown reason, i could not manage to book a flight for the day after...i decided to quickly go to a travel agency. starting the booking, the agent noticed that Abel french passport only had 3 months validity left...6 were required to travel. Abel had 2 nationality, i asked the agent to use his filipino passport which valid longer. The problem persisted, since his iqama and exit visa are linked to his french passport. Going quicly to airport to get some information on how to proceed, the custom manager told me that it would require to go to immigration, and transfer his exit visa from his french passport to filipino passport, without knowing how easy the process can be, neither how long it would take...i gave up for this time, and understood it was not the right time for us to go to Georgia. on Tuesday, we decided to make a road trip from Abha up to Al Ula over the 10 remaining days of vacation, i already had lost 4 days. i made the plan of the trip, booked few hotels along the way, and let's go! Samantha redo our bags, and this morning, we load the car and left Abha at 9 a.m.
temperatures were cool when we left (around 14), as it was still cloudy and we had very heavy rain on Tuesday 2 April, the day before. All along the way, temperatures didn.t raise above 16, we crossed several heavy fogs, as we were very close from the clouds, but only got 15 min of rain, before reaching Biljurashi. We had a small stop around Billasmar, to check the Asir magpie. only saw one briefly...then continued the road up to Shoibanah Wild Park and dam to have lunch on the side of the lake. very nice area.
We reached Al Baha at 16:00, and checked in Qimam Park hotel 7. A new hotel, clean. the hostess is also quite new and obviously inexperimented. Shortly after checking in, we drove to Khairah forest park. I still have the hope to find the Arabian Grosbeak, that i always missed so far in Oman or here last year. The area was busy in the evening, with water from yesterday rain flowing abundantly, and creating beautifull waterfall.
Many people gathered before iftar to enjoy the landcape and water flows. not the right time to look for the Grosbeak. We headed back to Al Baha before iftar to find a restaurant. the first choice selected on google map was not that fine, (small seafood restaurant, that doesn't appear that engaging. Difficult to find a good restaurant, finaly we went to a burger restaurant (66 burgers), not bad at the end. Being there, I found a nother restaurant that might be fine, but too late, possibly for another trip here: Soul restaurant. From the hotel, I also turned back to Tazaj restaurant to buy 3 small grilled spicy chicken for the next day lunch.
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