A Mid-Summer Journey, Yanbu – Day 4

It’s day 4 of our little mid-summer road trip (Yanbu) and I wake up to the squeals of seagulls and the crashing of waves on the shore of the beach right across our hotel. I open the window to have a look at the sea but become a victim of humidity. The bright sun rays shine in my eyes and I start regretting opening the window.

It’s a hot and humid day in Umluj, the Maldives of Saudi Arabia, and we decided on catching a boat out to the sea to see some crystal-clear water and meet some dolphins in Umluj’s waters as suggested by people online. But I guess we left our luck back at home in Jeddah as all the boat services had been closed for the next 2-3 months. Anguish and disappointment enveloped us until my genius self-asked Google for help. Google told me there were boat services at the port city of Yanbu just 2 hours away from where we were.

All aboard to conquer the sea of Yanbu!!!

We left for Yanbu ASAP and reached there an hour before sunset and found a very nice boat rentals service. We rented a small boat for 200 sar/per hour and picked some snacks and my camera gear to capture the ocean and the sunsets meeting in an hour.

We hopped on the boat and left to catch the sun before it drowned in the ocean of Yanbu. The captain of the boat was a very nice man which made the ride more fun. He sped the boat and we held on to race another boat to a nearby island with an old shipwreck. The ship was very rusty, filled with seaweed, corals and eroding away every incoming wave that it faced, the sunset rays gleaming on it and the mountains of Yanbu in a distance gave it a mystical and cinematic look. It seemed like something out of a movie, just imagining what stories that ship sunk with itself feels somewhat heartbreaking.

After getting a closer look of the shipwreck and capturing some shots of it, the boat captain led the boat to a place in the middle of the ocean wand threw some bread, we were confused at first but instantly realized what he was doing and all of us flocked to one side of the boat to see some fishes pop out of the depths of the ocean to give us a glimpse of their beauty. But We almost tipped over the boat to one side trying to get a glimpse of the ocean creatures.

We balanced the boat and threw some more bread to the see a beautiful sight of black and white striped fishes flocking up at the surface of the sea and have an all-out family buffet not knowing they’ll be part of a buffet soon. Okk okk I was joking lol. We fed them and moved further in the sea to witness the end of the day, the ethereal sunset while vibing with the songs that the captain was playing on the boats speaker.

An Ethereal Sunset

A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgundy red, the sea the color of love and Spanish mysteries. Surely high on my list of one of the most ethereal sites I’ve ever witnessed.

We raced another boat back to shore and the adrenaline pump it gave was just brilliant. As much as I wanted to stay in the sea longer it was just impossible with our schedule as we had to reach back home by midnight. We stopped at a nearby McDonald’s in Yanbu and had some food as there wouldn’t be any restaurants on the road ahead. With our now filled stomachs we left for the last part of the journey, saying goodbye to the Port city of Yanbu and Going back HOME.

The Closure of a Beautiful Journey

It all just felt unreal, the fact that we had been on the road for the past 4 days. All the fun we had, the memories we made, the people we met, the sights we witnessed, the history we traveled back in time for, the food we filled our tiny stomachs with, the disappointments and difficulties we faced, the experiences we had, the nature that we became a part of and finally, the family time that became a core memory and strengthened our relationship as a family. It all felt like we were still living in those memories while riding back.

We reached home back in Jeddah at 1 AM in the midnight. Parked the car, unloaded our bags, we didn’t want this trip to end, but as Geoffrey Chaucer said in his poem, Troilus and Criseyde: “But at the laste, as every thing hath ende, She took hir leve, and nedes wolde wende.” Simply meaning “All good things must come to an end.”