Hatta and Big Red

I had read in a few of the Dubai books about the Hatta pools, so we ventured out one day to Hatta. Hatta is a small town in the emirate of Dubai, next to Oman. When it was possible to renew a visitor’s visa by leaving the UAE, this was the location that everyone went to. Apparently, they have since changed the rule and you need to leave the UAE for 30 days before your visitor’s visa can be renewed. Several people were stuck in Oman for a month because they didn’t know this when they left.
The travel books did not exaggerate when they said there is not much to do in Hatta, other than visit the pools. Unfortunately, they don’t even have a sign up about the pools even though this is the only reason people go there. We drove around searching for quite a while. We found a mountain road with the most extreme switchbacks that I have ever seen. They are hard to explain and I doubt that the photos do it justice. Anyway, we got all the way to the top of this mountain and the beautiful pavement ended instantly. And, there was nothing there – just a road to the top of the mountain. There weren’t even any barricades to protect you from driving off the edge!
Finally, we found the pools and were very much underwhelmed. Perhaps we were there at the wrong time of the year, because they look like big dirty puddles. I have to admit that we didn’t take the long walk down to them so maybe it was more impressive from down there.
The other highlight of the journey to Hatta is “Big Red”. It is a huge sand dune (apparently over 100 meters high) and the sand in the area is truly reddish. It was entertaining to watch all the hot shots try to get up the hill in their fancy 4 wheelers. The dune is much steeper than it looks and lots of the vehicles were not able to make it up and ended up coming down backwards. We did not attempt the big hill, but did spend some time 4 wheeling in the expansive sand dunes along side of it.