Day 5, The Arabian Desert: Camel-bombed.

(Posted by Andrew about the events of Dec 16; near Dubai, UAE)

We started the day today by pretending we were still young and going to the Wild Wadi Water Park which is attached to our hotel. While fun, it was completely deserted (get it?) and we managed to go on every slide in under an hour. (I later asked a tour guide when the busy tourist season was in Dubai and he said this was it, but perhaps it was a bit low now because we are close to the holidays.)

After a brief swim in the Persian Gulf we were ready to head out for our desert tour in the afternoon. (The tour had lots of activities so get ready for a lot of photos - this is actually only a small subset of all the things we did, and even the camera protested by showing the low battery warning on only the fifth day of usage. Luckily I am a techno-nerd and was able to partially recharge it via the cigarette lighter in our guide's Land Rover.)

Our guide took us out to the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve where we had a full agenda. While the sun was still up we got to see a falconer (from the lesser-known emerate of "South Africa") demonstrate his skill:

Next we made our way to the camp as the Sun went down via 20 minutes of sand dune driving which was only a little scary and a whole lot nauseating. Unfortunately I couldn't get a single good photo of it while bouncing up and down in the car, so could only get clear shots of the calmer moments:

At camp, Jessica demonstrated that she had as natural an affinity for birds as the falconer did:

We then took a camel ride and tried to get a nice photo but got photo-bombed by another camel (camel-bombed?):

Then it was time for dinner watching a belly dancer:

And finally, anyone who knows me knows I can't finish a day with a good hookah:

With so much going on, we forgot to try tasting camel milk, get henna done, etc. We've saved a few things for next time, I guess.