Refreshed, we headed to the lobby of the hotel to wait for our Arabian Adventures Tour guide to arrive and then climbed into the air conditioned four wheel drive that would ferry us around for the next few hours. Apparently the tour company had been trying to get into contact for the past couple of days to delay our pickup time. With a bit of time to spare, the guide drove us to a few local sites including the huge mosque designed to fit 40,000 people and the hotel. There were only two other people on the tour – a couple from Sydney – and once they were safely on board, we headed out towards the desert. Our tour guide was from Syria and told us quite a bit about the political history of his country on the drive (partly because I asked quite a lot of questions). After half an hour or so we went off road into the dunes and got scared witless as our guide drove up and over the dunes and then slid sideways back down them. The desert is beautiful in the afternoon, at twilight and at sunset. We got the chance to take photos, visit a camel farm and then take a ride on a camel. Albeit a short one.

Just in case you were wondering, camels actually bite. Apparently the farmed females are quite tame and you can pat them but the males can become quite vicious, something a couple of our touring party almost found out the hard way when the male camel got a bit cranky. After the camel farm we drove to our desert camp where we would have dinner that evening. We crossed a truck road, which had a 24 hr stream of trucks heading into Abu Dhabi. It hadn’t occurred to us that we really hadn’t seen any trucks on the 140km and hour freeway. It’s because in Abu Dhabi there are dedicated truck highways. How much easier would that make a trip up the Hume?

Our short camel ride took place at the camp. The camel seemed a bit cranky actually and I wasn’t sure he was actually going to stand up at one point. He did and really it was just like riding a tall horse. After our ride we were greeted with local coffee, flavoured with cardamon which seems to be a favourite in the UAE, and dates which we were surprised we hadn’t seen yet. We sat on the Bedouin cushions and chatted while our guide prepared our barbecue dinner which consisted of two dips – lets call them babganoush and hummus, a number of salads with chick peas, greens, and pickled vegetables, turmeric rice, beef, lamb and chicken kebabs and fresh fruit salad. It was accompanied by a selection of non-alcoholic drinks. After dinner we sat and had a sheesha pipe, filled with apple tobacco. My years of smoking had stood me in good stead as I was the only one wo didn’t cough up a lung. Not that the apple tobacco induced a coughing fit- it was the smoothest smoking experience I had ever had. And despite our guide warning us it was 10 times stronger than normal cigarettes, I haven’t been tempted to re-indulge.

After our sheesha experience, our guide drove us back to town (via the truck road and then the highway) He seemed a bit cranky but given the impromptu tour he had given us earlier, TC gave him a tip. We were exhausted by then and went straight upstairs to bed.

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