A phone call on Tuesday saying “Can we come tomorrow?” was all the warning we had to prepare ourselves for an invasion of Websters.

Sarah, Steve, Frances and Gregor duly arrived the next day and had to get a taxi from the airport as Nigel had lost our car in the shopping mall car park and so was late home.

Fortunately he found the car eventually and we were able to return to our favourite desert picnic spot – Madbah.

We almost succeeded in losing the whole family in a bureaucratic conundrum.

Madbah is in a kind of no mans land. You exit the UAE through a border post but do not actually officially enter Oman. So when we returned those with residency visa ie Crawfords were allowed back into the UAE. Those with tourist visas ie Websters were told that they could not enter the UAE until they had exited Oman. We tried to explain that we had not entered Oman and so could not exit, but it made no difference. In the end we had to drive 20km to the official Oman border post to get entry and exit stamps in 4 passports – much to the amusement of the Omany border guards.

It was wonderful to have surprise visitors. So who else is coming over?