Dune Bashing and Belly Dancing.

Day three started out pretty easy, Michelle wasn't in the mood to do very much so I headed out to try to find the electonics souk I'd seen on the map, as I was in search of a cheap iPhone and a new digital camera. So, I boarded the abra and headed back across to Deira where I got happily lost in the little windy streets for a while before I found my intended destination. Unfortunately, when they said "electronics" they meant exactly that, it was all electronic parts & hardware shops, with a few mobile phone shops thrown in for good measure (but no cheap sim-unlocked iPhones) and no camera shops. After finding my way back to the hotel, we had lunch in the hotel restaurant and then got ready for the main event of the day: the desert safari! We'd booked this the previous day after seeing an ad for a safari in a leaflet in the back of a taxi that was nearly Dh100 cheaper than the one the hotel were trying to flog us.

Unusually for these kind of things, our driver was actually early - we wandered down at about 1:45 to see where we could wait for him, and he pretty much arrived in the door just as we got there! We got in the jeep, and after a little bit of haggling over the price, we set off to collect the other people in our group. These turned out to be a Brazilian couple on their honeymoon, who had arrived in Dubai the night before at 9pm and were leaving for 2 weeks in Thailand at 2am the next morning. Talk about a whistle-stop tour! They had pretty much "done" Dubai that morning, had spent it racing around in taxis seeing all the sights they could (which was more sights than we'd managed to see so far!). So, our little party was now complete, and off we went into the desert.

It took us about an hour to get out where we were going, and one spot of sand looking pretty much the same as any other to us, the only way we knew we were there is when the driver suddenly veered off the road into the sand. We only went in about 500m into the desert, where we met up with 2 other jeeps, and we stopped for about 20mins while we waited for another jeep to meet up with us and while the drivers let some air out of the tires. Naturally, everyone spent pretty much the whole time taking pictures. After that, off we went!



After a while it became obvious that the guys weren't just haring around the desert at random, they had a definite track that they were following. Nonetheless, it was quite an energetic ride! We were the third jeep in line in our little convoy, and about half the time you couldn't see the jeeps in front as you were either staring at the sky as we ramped up the side of one dune, or staring at the sand seemingly rushing up to meet you as you slid down the other side (sometimes nearly sideways on some of the bigger dunes). Definitely not a ride for someone who suffers from motion sickness! You were thrown about the place in the back of the jeep as we zoomed around, and as I had the center seat all I had was a lap belt so I had to wedge my knees in the backs of the seats in front of me to avoid being thrown around like that dude in the Road Safety ad that was on TV a few years back.


Follow the leader...

After about an hour of this roller-coaster ride (about only 5 mins of which was spent with the jeeps traveling straight and level) and just as the sun was starting to go down, we arrived at our encampment for he evening - a "bedouin village" where we were going to get our BBQ and night's entertainment. Apparently the entertainments on offer were camel rides, quad bikes, watching a desert sunset, dune boarding, sheesha pipes, a BBQ with unlimited (soft) drinks and a belly-dancer. Sounds pretty good eh? Well, the first thing on offer was the camel rides, but we decided against this after seeing that (a) you went around in a circle about 100m wide and (b) you had to pay Dh50 each for the pleasure. So, instead, we decided to watch the sunset. As the encampment was in a dip between several sand dunes, we had to climb the dunes to see it. Unlike at home, there's no twilight to speak of, the sun starts going down
and then 5 mins later, its gone - you can actually see it moving as it goes down. Last time I saw that was down in S Africa. Me & Michelle were nearly the only people to bother watching this tho, as all the other tourists were still getting their pictures taken with the camels :-)


Sunset

After the initial camel-induced frenzy was over, there was about an hour where nothing happened - apart from them opening up a few stalls full of touristy crap in the hope that we'd be bored enough to buy something! While we were waiting, me & the brazilian dude from the jeep decided to try the dune boarding - which consisted of grabbing the snowboard left lying up against one of the huts, picking a steep enough sand dune, and trying to figure out out for ourselves - in the dark :-) Only fell once, which wasn't too bad, until I realised that now my hair, pockets, etc were all full of sand.... After that, we were able to get dressed up in traditional bedouin garb and get pictures taken with a falcon, which I did. There was also a bar, which surprisingly enough was selling a full selection of alcoholic drinks (you got the soft drinks for free, but had to pay for the booze). Then, eventually, the entertainment started.

The first thing on was a couple of whirling dervishes - guys who pretty much spun around in circles while doing mad acrobatic stuff with umbrellas and various colored skirts that they had tied around their waist. That was fairly impressive - I would have lasted about 1min of spinning without wanting to fall over and probably puke, but they kept it up for a good half an hour non-stop and managed to do an entire well-choreographed routine as well! After them was a girl doing that usual spin-two-balls-around-yourself-on-a-rope thing that you see ppl doing in the crowd at pretty much any music festival you've ever been at, except she was dressed up and was spinning balls of fire on the end of chains, so I suppose that makes it traditional. Then, there was a break for the BBQ, which consisted of a couple of lamb kebabs, chicken skewers, some sort of possibly-vegetarian curry with rice, and some othe stuff i couldn't recognize. Tasty enough, even if the chicken was a bit on the black & crunchy side. After that, was the belly dancer. Was a pretty good show, apart from the bit near the end where she grabbed some "volunteers" from the audience. Much to Michelle's amusement, I was one of the ppl dragged up. Let's just say I won't be changing careers and taking it up professionally any time soon..... Turns out as well that the dancer was from eastern europe! :-) At the very end tho she got a bit more than she bargained for, she tried to get up a few ppl up, and ended up with a few slightly (or more than slightly) drunk indian guys who pretty much decided to do their own thing, and they were joined by a few more ppl (coincidentally, the ones that had partaken of the booze at the bar), and I don't think any of them even noticed when the bellydancer finished up!


Me, blending in

After the belly dancing was over, the lights went out and things wound up for the night. We all got in the jeeps and headed back. I though that we might go a bit slower over the dunes as it was pitch black out, but no! The driver just turned on his lights and went hell-for-leather like before! It was only about 1km to the nearest road/dirt track tho, so wasn't too bad - but I'd called shotgun on the way back so I got to see how close we actually came to all those bushes and rocks along the way.... We stopped off once on the way back at a service station so that they could re-inflate the tyres (and coincidentally so the station owner could hawk us more tourist crap), and were back at the hotel for about 10pm. On the way I got chatting to the driver and it turns out that not only was he a local (pretty much the first we'd met!) but he also was only volunteering for the desert driving for the fun of it - the company we booked though only paid his petrol costs and that was it. For the last bit of the day, we decided to take a detour before we went to the hotel: the brazilians we were with had said that the only thing they hadn't managed in the day was to go across the creek on the abras, and as the abra station was only about 200m from our hotel, we decided to show them where it was (and where the souks were, if they wanted to do some shopping). So, after that, it was back to the hotel, and bed- it had been quite an eventful day!