After living in a desert for a week one's thoughts stray to um well - the desert. This admittedly despite the fact that it was warmer in Cape Town yesterday than in Dubai...!
Either way on Friday we dutifully prepared ourselves at 15h00 to be picked up by Oasis Palm tours for some dune bashing. At 15h30 we continued to dutifully wait. By 16h00 I threw a hissy-fit and by 16h30 Farouk in all his splendid Arab-ness arrived. Think Oded Fehr from the Mummy. (actually girl's he was only splendid until he took his sunglasses off :( )
So off we set - at about 160km/h to meet up with the rest of the party in the desert just south of Dubai. This followed with about an hour of bouncing around in the 4x4 (it was a Toyota Landcruiser for any of you interested) a la tumble dryer cycle. Farouk was clearly the jock of the bunch.
Our next stop was a camel farm where we all (20 cars worth of us) duly descended on the 30-odd camels making coo-ing noises to attract their attention for photos.
After another hour or so bumping around in the back of the 4x4, all 20 cars arrived at a communal "barbeque" area for dinner and belly dancing. The driver
s set up a lavish buffet on the one side with salads, bread, kebabs & chicken while the other 3 walls contained a henna tattoo parlour, a shisha partition, the bar and various touristy stalls selling sand pictures in a bottle, abayas and stuffed camels. Also available were camels rides around the compund for the little ones. In the middle was a large floodlit stage while low tables and cushions flanked it from all sides.
After dinner a Lebanese belly dancer entertained us with her gyrations as well as the usual co-ercing of tourists to attempt to belly dance. Claire-Bear you would have kicked her @ss ;)
Generally a very fun afternoon. The sun setting over the sandunes is gorgeous and once the sun sets you can readily imagine how terrifying it would be to get lost in this area. There's no table mountain to guide you and you can't see anything beyond 5m in front of you.
2 comments:
sounds very cool. I saw a scruffy old camel the other day while driving along the highway - had not noticed him before. Otherwise they are not in abundance here more's the pity. If more people rode camels I am sure the traffic would not be as bad!
i'm not convinved,. They smell, are notoriously bad tempered and - according to Geoff - taste like boerewors.... ;)
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