Our guide was a new driver. I just loved that he said his evening prayer before we left.
He was from Pakistan and came to Abu Dhabi 6 months ago to work. The company also employs several of his brothers and cousins. I worry about them now since the tourist industry in the UAE has been essentially shut down.
What a fun time! Racing up the dunes, over the dunes, and down the dunes!
I loved it!
At one point we all stopped for pictures
You know how photographers talk about the 'golden hour'? Well this was the golden hour!
I never have considered myself a 'desert person'. I am more of a mountain lake kind of person but this scenery was dazzling! And as always, it was fun to share it with John and Katherine.
Walking up a hill in that fine sand gave me new respect for the Children of Israel and the family of Lehi, who wandered for years in this type of desert. It is hard work! I'm quite sure that I would have been a complainer.
Our young Pakistani driver had a lot of trouble driving. George and John thought he was burning out the clutch and several times he killed the car and we slid back down the dune. Finally we got a new driver and, as it turns out, he is the boss and the 'fix-it' man. Normally he would be the last man in our caravan, alert to any problems. And there was a problem! We got to stop and help a car that had gotten stuck and whose tire had come off the rim.
In the back of his car were all the tools needed to fix anything. This fellow was from Yemen and had 7 children. He was fun to talk to and he loved my camera. I think he took something like 50 photos! And most of them were very good!
Our destination for the night was a Bedouin encampment/tourist spot.
We had a delicious dinner with no camel meat!
I got a henna tattoo, which is something I have always wanted to do but have never wanted to pay for!
The tattoo artist was very fast and did a different design on each woman. I'm just sorry that I was in quarantine and no one got to see it.
Reclining on pillows and eating on low tables is quite exotic but no easy feat for some of the senior citizens on the trip. It was a prefect place to listen to Michael Wilcox.
What better place than the Arabian desert to learn about T H Lawrence, 'Lawrence of Arabia' ( you probably know about him from the movie) and the Muslim leader Saladin who defeated the European crusaders in 1187, which paved the way for Islamic re-conquest of Jerusalem and other Holy Land cities. During the next crusade he was unable to defeat the armies led by Richard the Lionhearted and lost much of the territory he had conquered but he was able to negotiate a truce that allowed for continued Mulsim control of Jerusalem.
We ended the evenings entertainment watching a whirling dervish! Just watching him made me dizzy!
A perfect end to our crazy COVID 19 trip!
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