Washing, blogging, sorting photos and generally relaxing, was how we spent Saturday back in Abu Dhabi. In the afternoon Rodney and Ramsay settled down to a feast of live English Premier League soccer, one match after another, after another….. Dinner was a yummy barbecue, non-Aussie style; we ate indoors! Oh, and Alison won the second round of Scrabble, hmmmph. We continued in catch-up and relaxation mode again on Sunday morning and then in the afternoon Alison took us to a variety of malls and souks for lunch and a general mooch around the gold and jewellery shops. Keeping to the now established Arabian style of meals, Alison whipped up a Sunday roast; beef, roast potatoes and veggies, and then she beat us all for a third time at Scrabble. Three of us have now resigned from the game and will pick videos for future nights in.
On Monday Alison took us to ‘The (British) Club’, as a member she could check us in for the day and we happily settled ourselves on sunbeds, under an umbrella, on the adult-only beach. Abu Dhabi doesn’t feel like anywhere else we have ever visited. It’s different in so many ways. The water was warm and a lovely turquoise blue, the people are friendly, we ate prawn & avocado sandwiches with long, refreshing mint & lime drinks, the sand under our toes was soft and white and I could have written that about so many places we have been to before, but this one is none of those and the whole place isn’t finished yet. Two massive pylons carried numerous power lines above the water in front of us and behind them was more reclaimed land being covered in skyscrapers of every shape and height. Twenty-two cranes, or more, were filling the skyline and there wasn’t a tree, or hardly a patch of green in sight. In trying to describe Abu Dhabi, I keep thinking of the game ‘join the dots’. Everywhere there are groups of buildings, but nothing to join them together apart from long stretches of highways. Even in the centre of the city, there doesn’t seem to be a hub or a heart. You need a car to travel across the dusty dry wastelands beside each mall, mosque, or souk; walking is not an option, apart from inside the shopping malls. Weeds don’t grow in the sand, only half-finished buildings sprout, and I’m finding that a glimpse of bougainvillea, or a frangipani tree are a delight to see. I’m starting to crave for a walk in Sydney with its fill of greenery and oxygen, but it would be amazing to see Abu Dhabi again in ten, or twenty years’ time to see how many dots have been joined and how many more impressive places they can create from the desert.
Tuesday was a day of contrasts for me. In the morning Alison and I went to a beauty salon for manicures and pedicures, always a favourite treat and my feet felt lovely afterwards. Well, they felt lovely for approximately four hours. After lunch we had a wander around the Shangri La Hotel while waiting for a pick-up from Sunshine Tours and then Alison left us in the hands of Zahood.
Along with Zahood, there were six of us aboard the very comfy, seven-seater, V6 Land Cruiser; Rodney and I, two French Canadians who worked for Etihad Airline and had lived in Abu Dhabi for ten years, and their cousin and her partner from Montreal. Zahood asked the Canadians if they had deserts in Canada and receiving an answer, obviously to the negative, he then advised them that he would find a bottle and put some sand in it for them to take home and grow their own desert; I bet he uses that line on every trip, but he made us all laugh.
The first stop on the tour was about an hour inland from the coast, at a camel farm. None of the animals looked like pedigree specimens and one was severely foaming at the mouth; maybe they had just cleaned his teeth to look nice for our arrival.
While we were playing with camels, Zahood let a lot of air out of the car tyres and, with all of us back on board, he turned off the road and headed along a sand track out towards some large dunes. He had already told us that he had been doing this job for many years and had also been a truck driver and a driving instructor, which helped ease my worries about what was coming next…… With all of us, and him, shouting “no, no, no, no, no, aaaarghhh!!!!”, he proceeded to hurl us up and down dunes, sometimes sliding sideways and sometimes, half covered by sand. I was glad I was in the back row and couldn’t see too clearly and the roll bars inside the car were pretty well padded, so we didn’t get too many bruises. Mind you, looking out of the back window and watching the other three cars do what we had just done, was quite incredible and scary.
After one final ‘over the top, slide sideways and re-emerge from under the sand dune’ hoon, Zahood found a smoother track and drove out to their camp. Here there was a platform surrounded by beautiful carpets, cushions and low tables, all spread out on the sand within a fenced compound and we were greeted with dates, Arabic coffee, a plentiful array of soft drinks and bottles of water. One of us made a feeble attempt at sand surfing, but the foot straps were so far apart, I could hardly stretch that far and still stand up, well that’s my excuse….
We struggled to the top of the dune, which was incredibly steep; sometimes you needed to resort to all-fours as you slid back down with every step. At the top, I really thought Rodney was having a heart attack! I wanted to sit up there for a while and enjoy the view over the dunes, but it was a bit too breezy for comfort, so after being sandblasted, and watching the sun slip lower in the sky for a while, it was brilliant to slide and bound back down to the camp. We threw ourselves into the whole Arab desert experience, riding a grumpy camel, which is a very wobbly experience when they stand up and sit back down, you really do have to hang on for dear life.
I got a henna tattoo on my leg, which is a very pretty flow of flowers. Trouble is, when I occasionally glance down I think I have a rather hairy leg, or I wonder what’s crawling up my leg! I wonder how long my ‘slag tag’ will last, hopefully it will wear off in a few weeks…..
When the sun had set, a belly dancer entertained us and, of course, dragged us all up on the stage for a bad attempt at wiggling. Having burnt a few calories, though not many, we then settled in to a feast of various Arabic dishes; curries, lamb, bread, kebabs, tabbouleh, houmous, and more. After dinner we were introduced to a beautiful, seven-month old falcon which can hunt by day or night and can see for 10kms. The only experience we passed on was smoking a shisha, or hookah. I embarrassingly asked if you suck or blow and was kindly informed that that should be more of a third date question; good answer. But then on discovering that I would be smoking it, decided not to partake. Though I have to say, it did smell rather nice, sort of fruity and sweet. Before we all piled back in to our cars for the return trip to Abu Dhabi, all the lights were turned off in the camp and we could see a gazillion stars hanging in the black sky above us; beautiful. Back at the Shangri La Hotel, Alison was there to pick us up and listen to all our stories on the way home.
Despite showers before bed time, we still found sand everywhere the next morning; it was still coming out of my hair three days later! After a slow start that morning, we headed over to the Yas Links Golf Club and sat on the veranda with cool drinks. The view from the clubhouse, out across the fairway to the water and the city beyond is lovely, so we made the decision to come back for dinner there on Friday. Next stop, a trip to Ikea for Alison to return some frames and us to look at some sofas, had us feeling like we could have been in Milton Keynes. Yes, this Ikea is exactly the same as everywhere else in the world.
The evening was spent enjoying a dinner and show with friends at The Club. The Abu Dhabi Dramatic Society were presenting Alan Ayckbourn’s play ‘Relatively Speaking’. It’s a wonderfully silly play full of misunderstandings and mistaken identities and it was very well presented. The three-course dinner was also really nice and beautifully presented, I’m stealing a couple of ideas on what to do with a cherry tomato.
