Recently I was invited to spend the day with a Kuwaiti guy on his boat,this is not a rare occurrence as every Kuwaiti seems to own a boat, it never normally seems like a wise idea to accept such invites, however this guy is a friend of the French girls I have become friends with, they are all teachers and get to meet lots of locals via their classes.
The owner of the boat was refreshing to meet, he was a true gent religious, patriotic and western minded! He/his cook had prepared us a feast and we even had a little dub step blaring out of the sound system at one point, most pleasing!
We headed out towards the smallest of Kuwait's 9 islands, qaru. We didn't swim near the island as it was quite cool that day, however the waters surrounding the islands apparently have a rich biodiversity , with coral reefs, 2 species of turtle and even pods of dolphins have been sighted on occasion! As we approached the island I could smell and see oil in the water, I researched this layer and found that this oil is naturally occurring, it comes from oil seeps, which are quite common in these areas and man has been exploiting these seeps for time for products such as tar-which is where the island's name originated from-qar is the Arabic for tar. This oil disappears in a matter of hours and adds to the organic wealth of the area, fascinating! Apparently it is not uncommon for people diving at night to emerge from the water "as black as tar" and apparently it is a bit of a biatch to get off! I shall hopefully be diving here in the not so distant future!
When we returned to shore I discovered that the guy who had been driving the boat all day is a "protector" of the sheikh of Kuwait, I was gutted I only learnt this post spending the whole day with him, he has invited us to spend the day on his new boat, which arrives in 3 weeks and is apparently impressive....I am preparing my inquisition as we speak! Haha!
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