Desert Safari

Much of my time spent in Dubai was filled with shopping and meeting some old friends, relaxing out by the pool but I did manage to see a few sights and experience some of the local attractions.  

As mentioned previously I went atop the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building, man-made structure and freestanding structure in the world.  I ascended to the 124^th of the 140 floors in the building which stood at about 830m tall.  The elevator itself was considered the fastest in the world moving at 10m per second. 

The second thing I did was to sign up for the desert safari, a tourist trap I’m sure but, being from Canada, the desert is fairly new thing to me so I figured I should take it in anyways.  I guess I should be more understanding of the people who visit Canada or Russia and being so happy to see snow for the first time.

 

I was on my own for this trip so I booked this 5 hour desert safari hoping my natural people and social skills would allow me to meet a few people along the way.  There was a family of four that were booked on the same tour as me.  I realized very quickly when we got into the truck that they did not speak much English so I was accepting the fact that we weren’t going to have much conversation.

 

The ‘safari’ starts about 45 minutes out of town so we first drive along the highway to a small town where we wait for all the other trucks that will be in convoy with us.  In this area of the town the locals are expecting us and waiting to sell any and everything to us.  I wasn’t planning on purchasing anything but one of the vendors was selling ‘keffiyehs’ which are the male Arabic headdresses.  They were way overpriced but I went for it anyway and got him to take a photo as well. 

After this the mother of the family I was riding with came over and talked to me despite her not knowing much english, asked me where I was from and what my name was.  She told me they were from Iran and she was so excited to meet someone from Canada.  Immediately she got her son to take a picture of us.  She was very blunt when she looked around and said ‘David, you have no friends?’   no, no friends…travelling alone.  She insisted that for the rest of the day I was to join her and her family.  She then commented that she liked my keffiyeh and said I looked Palestinian.  

Palestinian look

While waiting for all the trucks to arrive we got the chance to rent quad bikes to ride around the small sand dunes.  After about 30 seconds of riding one of the owners flagged me over and told me I had to

1)      Slow down

2)      Stop doing jumps over the dunes

3)      Stop doing donuts in the sand

A few minutes later I needed another reminder.   I blame it on my time and influences in Grande Prairie.  

A view sitting on the Quad

View from the front seat

We had now started the 4x4 in the real dunes in a Ford Expedition style truck and they took us up, down and around the desert trying to get as close to tipping over as possible.  It was enjoyable but I think I would rather have done the driving myself.  The entertainment came from the Iranian family who were all screaming behind me.  The driver and I were enjoying this quite a bit and it gave him a bit more incentive to do a few extra tricks in the sand. The mother of the family was often yelling up to me ‘Daviiiid, Hoobie, Hoobie’ (phonetic spelling).   I had no idea what this meant for most of the ride and figured my best way to respond was to say ‘Hoobie’ back to her.  At the end of the trip the son finally decided to tell me that Hoobie was Farsi for ‘how are you?’  So for a few hours we had been in an endless loop of us asking how the other was doing with no real answer’. 

Stuck truck

At certain points on the trip we would stop for photos and to see the sunset over the desert.  The sand was very soft and warm and really a nice setting to see the sun go down.  The mother took a few more pictures of me and told me to do my Palestinian look for some of them.  While we were standing in the sun she said ‘Canada, cold?’ and did some shivering body language.  I said yes, it’s quite a bit cooler than this usually not taking the time and effort to properly explain that the summers can be very warm.  She then took concern and said ‘Daviiid, the sun…your skin’ and gave me a very worried look.  To calm her down I had to show her my sunscreen and assure her that I was well protected.  

 

 

To finish off the safari we met at a camp in the desert to dine on traditional (or so they said) Arabic food and took in a quick dancing show with a female belly dancer and some other guy dancing with a costume that lights up.  The belly dancer was playing to the crowd and trying to get people involved.  The Iranian mother was always pointing at me and telling the dancer to pick me but thankfully she wasn’t biting up until a point when she got the whole crowd to do some weird finger snapping that I’ve never seen before.  Her hawk-like sight saw me struggling and that’s when she pulled me on stage and got me to give my best belly dancing routine.  I had to lift my shirt do some stomach convulsions and shake my hips.  I’ve gone 29 years focusing on only moving my hips in the forward and backward direction, the sideways movement is not a strength.  There were no pictures but my biggest fan, the mother, loved the show.   

oh yeah, and there were camel rides. I prefer them to horses

Next up, skydiving.