I am a bit behind again with the blog, but as our time in Qatar comes to an end, we are starting to return to some of our favourite places, or trying to pack in some of those we haven't seen yet. Last weekend we returned to Al Khor island "purple island". To get to the island, you have to wade through two cut-throughs, which, depending on the tide can either be up to your knees or around your ankles. This time we timed it so it would be round our ankles and we managed to successfully negotiate the crossings without seeing the myriad of black crabs about 2" across, which I was very thankful for. They had, however, returned for our homeward trip! The island is known for the purple or in fact red dye that used to be extracted from shells here. A very laborious and expensive business which is why only royalty or very special people used to wear the colour purple. We were searching for the piles of shells left behind from the proces, but were unsuccessful. It would have been nice to have gone with the natural history group here, but, alas, no time. The geology of the island is very strange, with a band of holy rock like the picture shows.

There are mangroves starting and this was a neat picture of showing how the new shoots radiate from the central tree.

The water is very shallow around here and you can see people wading through the water with nets catching their supper. They had strung a net across the whole area and must have been able to catch a lot of fish.

Another picture of the strange geology of the area. We had a great afternoon walking around exploring, and got back to the car just as the sun was setting. Another good time of exploration.