Normally I would blame Hamed

Ras Al Hadd, Oman

Normally I would blame Hamed as, like the rest of Mankind, whenever I make an error it is always someone else’s fault. However, on this occasion, the error was clearly mine. Mine because, quite simply, I have not tried harder to become proficient in Arabic.

It was well after dark and at Ras Al Hadd, the most easterly tip of the Middle East, where the sun rises first in all of Arabia. Hamed, my local Omani guide had said, “No problem. When I find turtle you come onto beach and join me.”

I assumed he meant I should drive onto the beach. Sadly not. I had missed the Arabic lesson on driving, that much was clear. Which was how I became buried to my axles in the world’s softest sand, in the pitch black, with the tide coming in rapidly. The experience was doubly embarrassing as only three days earlier I had passed a desert driving course with flying colours. The course’s message? If you want to get out of trouble, simply don’t get into it. So why, pray, did I turn off all lights and drive a 3000 kilogram Nissan Patrol onto the beach? My apologies, as I simply cannot explain. At least perhaps I might give it a try.

The starting point was the turtle. It is not often you encounter Mummy Turtles in the act of giving birth. Yet I did. Turtles put us humans to shame. What a song and dance we make of the babies we create and deliver to keep Mankind afloat. But we produce them in ones, twos and threes, occasional fours, fives, or even sixes. Quite rightly we welcome them all and quite rightly we feel proud. New babies are life-transforming events. But Mummy Turtle? Go for it Mum. She produces 140 at a time. The Green Turtle is actually an endangered species but has a predilection for Oman. Just as well, because half the world seems to go there to have a glimpse at what Mum does.

Basically, she comes ashore in roughly July, lays her eggs in the sand and hopes no one notices. Then she crawls back into the sea for the next 55 days, which is how long it takes an egg to hatch. Then back she comes, just in time for her offspring to appear. Take one look at Mum crawling in the sand and you can see how a turtle is designed for the water not dry land. Land is a temporary inconvenience. No turtle is ever going to set a land speed record, other than for turtles, especially on Omani sand. What is more, I have no idea how Mum remembers where she laid her eggs but she clearly does. Rather like squirrels burying their nuts in a British lawn. How do they remember where they left them?

Anyway, Hamed - a local Omani who responded to any name including Ahmed, Mohammed and John - became excited and flashed his torch light, so I became excited as well. I turned off my headlights to avoid upsetting Mummy Turtle and eased the Nissan forward. I travelled about 20 metres and that was it. The problem with a big and heavy 4x4 is that you cannot feel the wheel spin. You can hear it and then only when the air-conditioning is off and the windows are down, not always a favoured position in a baking Middle East. That is why I ended up to my axles and that is why I disgracefully became stuck.

So what the Hell, why not leave it stuck and have a look at Mummy Turtle? That is exactly what I did. And oh boy, did Mum look unimpressed. She definitely carried that mother-in-law expression of complete intolerance for anything other than family. The last thing Mummy Turtle wanted was an incompetent Brit, or for that matter an overenthusiastic Hamed, touching her, shoving her, pushing her, or for that matter shining bright lights in her eyes. Bright lights, you see, are a problem for the multiple tinies that have just hatched under her watchful eye.

The little beasties, adorable even to an emotion-free codger like me, have somehow to make it to the sea. The sand was alive with little turtle tinies. No one understands how they know where the water is to be found but one thing is certain, if you shine a bright light that is where they will head. So if you are going to shine a light at a baby turtle, be sure you are by the water’s edge, not somewhere different. They have little enough chance of survival as it is. Something like 1 in 1000 will make it to adulthood and that is before Hamed’s torch and my stranded Nissan are factored into the equation. The few that do survive can live to be more than a hundred.

So off headed Mummy Turtle to the ocean, her offspring in hot pursuit. At that moment, all I could do was wish the tinies well and head back to the Nissan. It was time to extract the car from the sand. Oh dear. Hamed said forward, so I went forward, only to realise that Hamed had meant reverse. So the original burial to my axles in sand rapidly became burial to wheel arches. Anyway, I was up for the challenge, as the optimist still lay dormant inside me.

“Left!” instructed Hamed, who was stood outside the car and pointing through the open driver’s window at my steering wheel, his face eerily lit by a fading torch.

So I did his bidding; rapidly my language took a turn for the worse as I realised the Omani meant right. For wheel arch now read Nissan door frame. The car was about to become subterranean. Why had I not attended that Arabic lesson on driving and directions? Seeing a replay of a World War Two video a few months ago had, at the time, seemed more attractive and I had played truant from my classes. Yet right now, on a beach on eastern Arabia, I realised that some extra driving vocabulary would have been effort well expended. Hamed might have been able to say “turtle” in 18 different languages but when it came to unclogging stranded Nissans he quite naturally reverted to type.

So it was forward, reverse, left, right, high ratio, low ratio and locked differential. Basically, whatever Hamed suggested I did the opposite until “Pop!”, like a cork from vintage champagne - there is none of that out here - the Nissan was up and away, fine sand flying in multiple directions. Hamed clapped, I sighed and Mummy Turtle and her tinies? Heaven knows. I can only guess they were delighted to be left in private.