Kuwait City (Kuwait)

Had some time this morning to explore the hotel. It was actually located in an isolated area. It was stunningly hot, even around 1100L. I realized that we lucked out last night and arrived after the worst of the heat of the day was already over. I found a small beach - nobody was around at all - and took the opportunity to dip my toes in the Persian Gulf. Wow!! The sea bottom was rocky and uneven (very little sand) - I was glad to have my sandles. It wasn't deep enough to swim, so I just ended up wading (I'm not sure who uses the beach at the hotel, since it really didn't seem like it was good for swimming. After about 20 minutes, I walked around a little more and found a pleasant pool. There were more people there. When I got back to my room to get ready to go home, I was glad to discover that I hadn't been burned by the sun (luckily)... Checked out of the hotel (1400L) and then had some lunch. After picking up some items in the souvenir shop ("sand frame" and Arabic language dictionary), I met up with my crew (1445L). It took a little while to get back to the Airport (traffic). It was BLAZING hot on the tarmac! I wasn't prepared for it, actually. The air conditioner blowers that were provided weren't capable of cooling us down, either. When we did some pre-departure calculations, it was clear that it was too hot to take off (aircraft performance limitations). I started to get worried we would have to tell our passenger that we couldn't go - but he ended up arriving around four hours late and it didn't matter as much in the end. By that time, the temperature had dropped to 40 C (!!!). We ended up getting out of the chocks around 2000L. Had some trouble with the clearance (they wanted us to go into Iraqi airspace...) but got airborne and sorted out our problem as we flew west. Made it to Souda Bay just before midnight (fuel stop)...