Things to do in Umm Al Quwain

Time Out discovers the part-sleepy, part-extreme charm of Umm Al Quwain, the UAE’s most retro emirate Discuss this article

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Poor Umm Al Quwain. It’s less than an hour from Dubai and by rights should be visited far more frequently by expats, but most swing by for one reason and one reason alone: to pay a visit to Barracuda and its
well-known bottle shop. Next door to this there’s Dreamland Aqua Park, which, coupled with a skydive at the nearby flying school, makes for a pretty decent day trip. Still, few seem inspired enough to stay in the ‘retro’ emirate for a whole weekend. But perhaps if they knew about one particular hotel they’d change their minds.

Sitting on the uninterrupted ocean front is the UAQ Beach Resort. It looks pretty dinky from the outside, but you’ll find little to complain about as you’re whisked through a thicket of palm trees on the back of a golf buggy, past a huge pool that’s footsteps from the shores of a private beach. With spacious seafront villas, a shockingly cheap pool bar and tiny kittens meowing from the bushes, we decide we could quite happily spend the evening here doing very little.

But we had more sinister plans during our visit, and could only spare a few minutes to dump our bags and catch a cab over to the nearby Flamingo Beach Resort. Kitsch and charmingly kooky, the Flamingo is one of the lagoon-facing hotels, offering grassy lawns that lead out to a jetty. Rather like Umm Al Quwain itself, it’s a serene spot that offers so much more. Think boat trips and fishing around the 23-kilometre creek known as Khor Umm Al Quwain, itself dotted with tiny mangrove islands inhabited by flamingoes and cormorants. Yet the hotel has been overshadowed by its claim to fame: the art of spearing crustaceans. In other words, crab hunting.

The notoriety of these nightly expeditions means that the Flamingo’s crab-hunting boat is usually full as it splutters off into the mangrove. We’d be hard-pushed to find a more entertaining evening activity as we’re handed spears and told to jump into the shallow water, before creeping stealthily through the mangroves like Amazonian natives. (Or, more accurately, like spear-wielding expats in frumpy fluorescent-orange life jackets, all wading through knee-deep water stabbing wildly at anything and everything that moves).

Time passes and the thrill diminishes as everyone seems to spear a crab except us. We blame it on the fact that the torches we’re holding are attached to the boat, forcing us to march together like a mass killing machine. ‘How are we supposed to spear anything under these conditions?’ we grumble. But we liven up when we get back to shore, where the crabs and the unlucky squid that got in the way are cooked up for dinner.

The next day we head out on the creek again, chugging past tiny islands, spotting long-limbed pink flamingoes fluttering above the mangroves and the inexplicable sight of dozens of watermelons bobbing in the water.

Aside from killing crabs, a waterpark, flying school, museum, motorplex, ladies’ spa and mangrove islands – enough to keep even the most hyperactive tourist entertained for a couple of days – there’s not much more to do in Umm Al Quwain, but this ends up being part of its charm. Later that day, parked on sun loungers at the UAQ Beach Hotel with palm trees in front of us and frosty beverages in hand, we decide doing nothing isn’t so bad after all.