The first weekend

The weekends here are Friday and Saturday. While you guys are home going out on Saturday night, I'm showering for work and on the way to the office. On the other hand, my weekend starts your time about 9:00 Thursday morning.

When I woke up for work that first Thursday, the jet lag was barely noticeable. The time difference is 8 hours. Sweet. I'm always overtired so my body is pretty good at falling asleep. I decided to reward myself and not set an alarm. Figured I'd wake up around 9:00. I woke up at 11:30 to the sound of room service knocking to clean my room. Great, I missed breakfast and half an exploring day.

The office director recommended I go see the Dubai Aquarium at Jumeirah Marina. I wandered over to the information desk to find out how to get there. The gentlemen there told me the resort was closed to those who didn't have a booking. It had just opened and overwhelmed with guests. So there goes that idea. I ask what tours are available. He recommends the desert 4x4 safari and pulls out a brochure. Desert safari? 4x4? I'm so down. The tour leaves at 3:00. Perfect time to wander around and find something to eat, change and come back.

Three o'clock comes and a group of us climb into the van. There is our driver. Mohammed is in his late 20s and recently arrived from Syria. He wants to work in Europe. He is fascinated with American biker gangs and wants to know if they really start fights everywhere they go. There are two attractive french girls on vacation, who barely speak english, two aussie guys and a third aussie woman traveling by herself.

We stopped for gas, us tourists bought sodas and snacks. We drove to the meeting point. About 25 SUVs showed up, all full. All but one were Toyota Land Cruisers, which is apparently the official vehicle of the desert. The lead guide was in a hummer H2. There can be 25 - 50 SUVs in a given caravan. We stop for pictures as the guides deflate the tires.

This was our ride for the night.

Our Driver, Mohammed

A few other SUVs as we all met up, notice the landcruiser back right is stuck and being pulled forward.

The next part of the tour consisted of good old-fashioned fun. Driving around the dunes. Once they let the air out of the tires, these things could really move around the sand. We'd climb up and down dunes, follow ridge lines, bomb up over crests. I'm pretty sure we heard Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" at least 5 times as we rode along. At certain points, we'd stop and get out for photos ops.

Dunes in the Distance

Out the front window...

There were tons of ATVs following us.

From the rear window...

After 2 hours or so, we pull into "camp." Here, there are all kinds of attractions for tourists. Camel riding, falcon feeding, and the camel stables are the primary ones. Clearly, I cannot travel this far and not ride a camel...

Camel Riding

After exploring the outside with the three Aussies (the French girls have disappeared), we go inside the tent ring. There are a number of small trinket shops. Farther inside, they have a station set up with Arabic coffee and some fried dough thing. Alright I'm game. I'll apologize in advance, I don't remember the appropriate names of any of the food I tried, so I'll just describe it by how it seemed to me. Arabic coffee tastes like REALLY strong tea, but I don't know where they get the name coffee from. The fried dough stuff tastes just like the fried dough you get at a county fair, or on the fourth of July, only its covered in honey instead of powdered sugar. We move on.

There was another falcon inside, but I decided that pushing a line of little kids out of the way to get my picture with the bird was inappropriate. Another station has a type of bread. It is similar to fried pita with balsamic vinegar.

Next comes dinner. There is an enormous buffet set up for all the tours. I go through and get at least one of everything. First is a salad-esque dish, then rice, and now on to Kebabs. There are a variety of kebab meats, interspersed with tomato, onion, carrot, peppers etc.. I can't tell you for sure, but I'm pretty sure I ate at least some combination of the following animals, chicken, cow, lamb and goat. One of the guides told us he was serving camel and then laughed. I don't know if he laughed because he was tricking us, or because we were actually eating camel. All of the kebabs were spiced very heavily in a spice that was new to me.

After dinner, we moved to a central ring that contained the dance floor. So begins the Belly Dancing. About 5 minutes into the show, one of the speakers blew out. I don't mean like it ripped or something. It actually caught fire and was smoking pretty good. About 5 minutes later someone came out with a new one which was promptly thrown up and wired in. The show lasted another 20 minutes. The dancer often dragged the audience up on stage to dance with her. I thankfully didn't get a personal call out, but at the last dance they asked everyone to come up on stage. After the dance, it was thoroughly dark and we returned to hotel. I grabbed my first beer in the UAE at the hotel bar with the three Aussies. It was 35 Dirhams ~ 10 Dollars.

There was supposed to be a pic of belly dancing here, but the light didn't work. Sorry y'all.

I woke up Saturday in time to catch the free hotel breakfast. The hotel has a free shuttle to Jumeirah Beach. Perfect, there's the exploration destination for the day. The shuttle left at 11:00. I now know where Jumeirah beach is and could get there again, but I could not even begin to tell you which way the bus went. Like I said, national pasttime to know back alleys to get everywhere. So Jumeirah beach is pretty much just a beach. It was in a nice park, a beach side shack or two selling burgers, fries and sodas. The water was pretty clear. The only real difference is that on either side of the beach were large barriers. Clearly I have to check this out. On the other side of the barriers is miscellaneous construction. Beach filling to the south, and some kind of large jetty constrution to the north. In the middle of my walking up the beach, a dredging ship showed up and started throwing even more sand up on the beach.

Jumeirah Beach with Burj Al Arab in the Distance

Camels on the Beach!

Dredge and fill - make more islands...

As the day was ending, I headed home and ate at whatever American chain happened to be closest, probably Chiles. I turned into bed about 10PM. My phone went off about midnight. I was very confused, it was too early to go to work. Mohammed, the driver from the off-road safari was calling. He wanted to take me clubbing in the city. I told him I couldn't make it as I had to be at the office in 8 hours. Thanks though... Sunday morning --> Back to work.