You may notice that that this is my second post on hiking in Ras Al Khaimah. Along with some wonderful colleagues…

I went hiking every week starting last November up until this week.

While the hiking group varied from week to week, there were some stalwart hikers including Andy, our fearless leader:

And Jeri, who after Andy, is the most frequent and dedicated hiker I have ever met:

After Jeri and Andy, Bonnie is another hiker that showed her tenacity by going on almost every hike, and in fact did more hikes than I did (you have to look for her):

Apart from the incredible views with which we are rewarded after a strenuous climb up the side of one of the mountains…

We also find a lot of interesting things up there including tiny little flowers:

Urns hidden in old rock huts

And cisterns for gathering the precious little water that falls.

And other things…

We also get to play around in some very interesting features such as this waterfall (minus the water!):

While we pride ourselves on our fitness, make no mistake that we are working hard to get up there. Of course, on this day it was about 40 degrees C at the base, and only a little bit cooler at the top where these photos were taken:

If you want to find your way up to some of these spots, you can click on the Google Earth placemarks to see the location of two of our more exciting hikes:

Map of hikes Did you see me at the top of the rock fall?