Desert Safari

After exploring the city of Dubai on Sunday, today we discovered that there are two sides to this Emirate. The side that we we shown around today is the desert part of the country. We were picked up late afternoon by our driver in a nice big comfy Toyota Land Cruiser and were driven out of town towards the dunes. It is amazing how quickly the buildings disappear and how quickly the landscape changes, giving way to scrubland and then suddenly to sandy desert.

After a little drive we arrived at the meet point for our safari and 13 other cars turned up. After a lot of waiting around we finally headed off to "bash some dunes"! It was a brilliant experience to drive up what seemed to be near vertical slopes and then go straight down the other side. This carried on for almost an hour when we eventually stopped to watch the sun go down over the dunes. The colour of the sand as the sun is setting is incredible, really deep red and it seems to change colour as you are watching it.

We messed around in the sand and took lots of photos and then were told that we were moving out towards the "traditional Bedouin camp". I'm not sure how traditional this camp really was, what with all the electricity, sound systems and flushing toilets but it was nice, well laid out and still in the middle of nowhere! There were lots of things there like camel rides, sand boarding, traditional Arabic dress but we went over and had some henna tattoos done by the most amazing artist. She was so quick, didn't need stencils and it was free (although we still gave her money for being amazing). You didn't get a choice what you wanted but just gave her a body part and she painted away, excellent!

Our entertainment for the rest of the evening was a belly-dancer and she was excellent. At one point she came right over to me and basically gave me my own private dance about 10 inches in front of my face, shaking pretty much everything she had! I definitely wasn't complaining. At one point, as a sign of appreciation, someone gave a traditional loud Arab shout/shriek/wail and we were both convinced that our friend Tom from uni was right there with us but luckily it was just a local!

It didn't take long before she started dragging people up to dance with her and Megan and I were both taken up separately to try our hand at belly-dancing. Mightily embarrassing but a good work out!

The evening was completed with traditional foods, barbecued by the locals before heading back to civilisation.