It is always fun to see camels meandering along the road.  This may be because they

This picture is actually from a camping trip in December

are still so foreign looking to us.  Seeing a moose or bear in Canada was always novel (just because the experience is relatively rare) but a horse or cow is simply part of the landscape.  Camels are ultimately a part of the landscape here but they are still, after only 4 months, a novelty.  We haven’t had the chance to ride one yet but rest assured I won’t be leaving the Middle East without a camel ride.  Why am I talking about camels? Well our adventures of late have included quite a few camel sightings.

With our intrepid friends the Palmers we ventured out into the desert last Saturday to play with the kids in the sand dunes.  We did a little driving in the sand which stresses me out to no end.  If I had a vehicle that was meant for that kind of driving I think I would enjoy it but with the constant threat of getting stuck in the desert with a car full of kids hanging over me like a guillotine my cortisol levels are way too high to truly enjoy the ride.  Nonetheless we found some excellent sand dunes to play in.

The Palmer and MacDonald clans enjoying the sand

As a kid my scout troop would raise money every year by filling and selling sand bags.  I have great memories of running all over the giant piles of sand we used to fill the bags.  The dunes here are much larger and a great deal of fun.  So we resolved to come back at the end of the week to do some camping.

On our way home we ran across some locals with their dogs at a camel race track.  The dogs were Salukis, which are one of the oldest known domesticated dog breeds.  They look built to run and these locals looked like they were getting set to make them do just that.  The men had rigged a long metal beam to the top of their jeep and from the end tied a dead rabbit.  Surprisingly, Lilli didn’t put up much of a stink about the poor rabbit.  She wants a rabbit.  Mainly, I think, because she’d like to name it Arnab (which is Arabic for rabbit).  Anyway, with the rabbit dangling from the metal pole they would drive down the outside of the track with the metal beam and its rabbit sticking out over the track and the dogs in hot pursuit.  I suggested to the kids that we should let Bonnie and Clyde race but for some reason they didn’t think that was a good idea – one of the other dogs might mistake them for a rabbit.  Bridget captured a video of the dogs sprinting down the track – if you look carefully you can see the rabbit skipping along in front.

Generally when we go camping on a weekend we invite tons of people.  More often than not one or maybe two families actually join us.  This long weekend we had 8 besides ourselves. Of course, this made for quite the enjoyable occasion.  After work on Wednesday I came straight home to pack the vehicle and lead the way.  The Palmers were off work before us and led another family out to the place we’d found on Saturday.  So it was up to Lisa and I to lead the rest.  With a bit of a false start getting away from the gas station we all made it out to the desert.  One family only had a two wheel drive rental vehicle but managed to get through the sand to the… “campground,” random spot in the desert, the place we decided to pitch our tents.

A morning view from the top of the sand dunes overlooking camp.

That two wheel drive made it out no problem but we spent a couple hours the next morning digging them out.  After several attempts at pulling them out a local came by with a beat up old truck and managed to get them to solid ground.  Of course, he snapped one of the two tow ropes we had in the process.  Being that it wasn’t my vehicle stuck in the sand it was all pretty exciting.  I did feel bad for Paul during the ordeal with his three kids, one just a baby.  In the end we were all safe and sound just super dirty.  This was Paul and Michelle’s first camping trip in the UAE… perhaps one of their first camping trips ever.  Michelle had a roasted marshmallow for the first time! Maybe they don’t have marshmallows in Ireland? 🙂  Getting their vehicle stuck in the sand was a great introduction to camping… they won’t soon forget the experience.  Now if we can get them to practice a little cognitive dissonance they may join us again.  They were fun to have along so I hope they do.

I’ve been looking to spot a Camel Spider since we got here and felt optimistic about our

Can you see the scorpion in the house Jaron and his friend made?

chances on this trip.  Alas no Camel Spiders but I did catch a gecko and even better a fairly nice sized scorpion.  Jaron and his friend had a great time with the scorpion – they tortured… I mean played with it for at least an hour.  They even built it a little “house,” hiding place out of sticks for it.

We discovered that a body board makes a great sand dune sled.  My skim board wasn’t much fun, to my disappointment.  The next time we’ll leave the skim board at home and bring the body board.  It gets cold at night in the desert but we were comfortably warm in our new sleeping bags and on our new two-inch backpacking sleeping mats.  Well kirsten was a little cold… we’ll have to find her a fleece liner for her sleeping bag.

Surprise you’ve been cuddling with a scorpion all night.

We are fairly confident that we have the majority of the camping gear we need for our European camping trip this summer.  Just a few more small things and we should be all set.  Anyone want to join us for a backpacking trip through Italy and France in June?

Happy Birthday to the United Arab Emirates – affectionately known as the UAE.  The UAE is a federation of emirates or small kingdoms each headed by their own Emir (a hereditary position like a king).  The Emir of each emirate is an absolute monarch and the constitution that binds the seven emirates together really just spells out the relationship between the 7 participating emirates.  There is a president of the country, who is chosen from among and by the seven rulers.  I actually do not know quite as much about the politics of the country as I ought to – living here and all.  i have learned a remarkable amount over the holiday though, for instance:

• The UAE turned 41 on December 2nd.
• The colours of the flag: red, green, white and black
• The rulers faces looks strangely good plastered on the side of a white SUV – and they were on a ton of SUVs
• You may not be able to drink here but that doesn’t stop anyone from driving recklessly
• Driving and getting stuck on the beach is a national past-time

See how educated I am now.

We decided to spend National Day camping on the beach with our good friends the Andersons.  We returned to Sandy Beach and Snoopy Island.  We had such a good time on the Islamic new year we thought we just had to give camping there a try. We should have realized it was going to be chaos.

The first glimpses of the Gulf of Oman are always exciting.  As we came around a bend

Looks like a refugee camp

in the road though and looked down on the “family campsite” that hugs the coast for several miles before one gets to Sandy Beach our excitement turned to: fear, wonder, apprehension, ashes in our mouth? None of those work really.  I suppose one could describe it as the feeling you get when you are about to embark on something adventurous where the outcome will be almost assuredly unpleasant but also strangely captivating and memorable.  The beach was absolutely packed with campers.  It looked just like what one might imagine a refugee camp to look like.

There were an odd assortment of tents, trailers, and other contraptions.  Residents erected fences of mesh or tarp to block out their neighbours.  There was even a fifth wheel with a tent trailer on its roof.  The neighbour to our left ran a generator all night to power his fluorescent lights.  The neighbour to the right had a trailer (not a camp trailer but a steel box trailer) with a railed sitting area on the roof.  At one point (around 11pm) he began grinding metal for something and spent several hours doing it.  We had a few arabic gentlemen that could not get enough of driving their 4x4s on the beach.  ATVs and dune buggies also made their way up and down the chaos.

There was an assortment of music.  The Arabic and Hindi melded together at strange points.  Occasionally claps and shouts could be heard as people attempted to dance to the music.  Fires flickered up and down the beach as a massive orange moon rose out of the gulf to light the party.  It was, a fascinating… cultural experience.

So we spent a strange night of intermittent sleep on the beach.  In the morning as we climbed from our tents we watched the sun burst from the ocean.  I don’t suppose that I could ever get tired of that scene.  A good number of people left in the night or early

Hundreds had already cleared out by dawn

hours of the morning.  Why they needed tents if they never intended to use them for sleeping I can only guess.  Those guesses lead to no good ends though so I’ll pretend they simply had to be to work early in the morning.  They, of course, left all their trash on the beach.  It wasn’t long though before workers, from the neighbouring resort I presume, were there to pick up the larger pieces of litter.  I watched as one of those workers carefully set aside items he could reuse: a half a bottle of instant coffee, a  decorative box that probably once held cigars and an assortment of other treasures.  He saw me watching him though and asked if I wanted any of these things he was setting aside.

The kids were in the water as soon as they were out of the tent.  It wasn’t long before they were pulling strange things out of the water: a starfish, a Heineken bottle…

I bought the kids a skim board and a boogie board the other day.  Kirsten wiped out pretty good on the skim board.  She is still complaining of being soar.  I took a few stellar falls myself.  As I drug myself out of bed this morning I realized that I’m older than I used to be…

Lisa and I swam out to Snoopy Island with Jeremy Palmer (his family joined us in the morning – a wiser family than ours).  This time I had a pair of fins and a proper snorkel.  I tried the snorkelling mask but my nose being plugged really messed with my head.  So Lisa used the mask.  We encountered as many as half a dozen turtles each about a foot to two feet across.  You could swim right up to them.  I was tempted to grab a hold of them and see if they’d pull me along under the water.  Turtles can bite I’m sure so I thought twice about that and let them be.  It was fun just to swim with and watch them.

There were tons of Jellyfish in the water.  We swam through several… schools, swarms, what the heck do you call a clump of Jellyfish?  Well, according to Dictionary.com they are called a: smack, brood, smuth, smuck or fluther of Jellyfish.  So we swam through many a fluther of Jellyfish and took quite a few stings.  I was stung in the armpits, along my arms, my back and oddly enough even around my mouth.  Apparently you should not kiss a Jellyfish.  After 6 or 7 hours in the water the waves pushed these fluthers of Jellyfish into shore and we were forced to abandon our water adventures for the day.  I should say that the stings, while leaving the occasional mark, were not much worse than a prickle and the majority of them were about the size of a fingernail.  I did encounter quite a few bigger than my hand too.  Jaron got stung in the leg but clearly it wasn’t too painful; he absolutely refused to let me pee on him.

Lisa drove for the first time in the UAE.  I was very grateful too sleep the last hour of the trip home.  She obviously did a fine job driving because I did indeed sleep.  I think I woke up for nearly every traffic circle though just in time to have a small heart attack before returning to sleep.

Today we found a text message on our cell phone from the Emir of Sharjah wishing us a happy National Day.  You know, it was a happy National Day.  Thanks for being such an awesome country UAE and thanks to the rulers for continuing to provide a land of peace and prosperity, Insha’Allah.