Renting a car

Andres goes to work around 7.30am while me and the boys sleep until 9am or so. We usually have breakfast in the garden at 10am, last two mornings the landlady has been out of the house that time, so we have not had any company (but a maid or a male servant). Yesterday after the breakfast when the landlady arrived she invited me to the house and we had nice chat again about different things. In example we talked about growing the vegetables and it turned out we can grow pumpkins and watermelons both in Oman and in Estonia, just that in Oman watermelons get huge and pumpkins small while in Estonia it is vice versa:) Anyway, when it got time to take a walk with the boys (Mihkel still takes his daily nap) then the landlady insisted we needed to have some lunch. We had rice, chicken, potatoes and spinach for lunch. I have to say most of the local food is rather spicy and since our kids have not got used to spicy food it is a bit complicated for them but they find their bits and pieces to eat as well. The locals eat with (right) hand and when Mihkel saw the landlady eating with the hand he also decided to start eating with hand, kids seem to have it easiest to adopt to the local traditions;)

During the last days we have also tried to find a good deal for car rental and to find a new accommodation from the 18^th December when we have to move out from here. As for car rental, we hope we can get a car today. But one can never be sure here. Yesterday Andres was calling to one car rental and they seemed to have cars. In the evening he was calling again and then he had conversation like this (probably with some Indian on the other side):

A: “i would like to rent a car, do you have any?”

He: “Yes. We have.”

A: “Can I have one today or tomorrow?”

He: “But when do you want?”

A: “Today, then”

He: “But we do not have today”

A: “ok, tomorrow, then. When can i come to get one?”

He: “Do you want to get it in the morning or in the evening?”

A: “In the morning”

He: “But we do not have in the morning”

...

We are more than sure that today when Andres calls again nobody has any information about the deal they made. But well, this seems to be usual here. One just has to be very patient and easy-going.

Another thing with the car is driving itself. Muscat is very scattered city, it goes like 40 km along the coast, so you do nothing by going by foot, so having a car is the best option. But the speed limits are crazy here. In the city there are highways where the speed limit is 120km/h but everybody drive by 140 km/h. There are some areas with 80km/h but again, everybody seem to drive by 100 km/h. And when not knowing where exactly to drive, it gets very complicated. Yesterday we tried to buy a paper map from a small bookstore but they did not have any. Andres has downloaded some navigation system but it does not always work, so we cannot trust it completely. So let's hope Andres finds his way back to us when and if he gets a car:) One more problem that we faced was children car seats. The car rental companies ask for quite insane price for the child seats, especially since we will rent a car at least for a month and we need two car seats! So we have decided it is probably cheaper to buy the seats from the shop. (I was already joking that when we will leave in January i can open my small baby equipment market in the airport and sell all the kids' stuff we have bought here but that would be too big to take back to Estonia...)

We are also browsing through the accommodation sites, more precisely apartment rental sites. There have been some great deals out there in the web but when we have called they did not have anything available. We will call more places today.