Desert Safari Bollocks Part 2

Our convoy rolled up at the same time as 7 or 8 other vehicles and people of all nations came together to empty the sand out of their shoes. For those wanting to ride a camel or to snowboard down a sand dune, this was their chance. Camels are not nice animals. I suspect the reason they live in the desert is that all the other animals on the planet chased them away from the good spots. And there’s nothing dignified about riding a camel. I have the video footage of my wife to prove it. Some people aren’t happy with only having sand in their shoes, hair and mouth. They want the full ‘sand in your undies’ desert experience. This is where the sand boarding comes in. All the sand you can handle and a good laugh for everyone else.
Next it was into the camp for Arabic coffee. I’m not so big on proper Arabic coffee. For me it is a bit like England with their Football/Cricket/Rugby. They bought it to the world, but now they are just not very good. Luckily one of the Russians in the group spotted the bar at the other end of the camp which I suspect wasn’t a fixture in days gone by but we weren’t complaining. We were there faster than a young camel willy wrangler washes his hands after work.
I was surprised to see two cats skulking around as we sat on the cushions laid out around the low dinner tables. You don’t see cats in the desert very often. But why not? For a creature so fussy about where it goes to the toilet, the desert must be a dream come true. It’s just a giant litter box.
Dinner was served under the stars and the cats got the scraps and left (but didn’t go too far I suspect) then they pumped up the music to herald the arrival of the belly dancer.
Watching her, it occurred to me that Arabic women were belly-dancing hundreds of years ago and at the same time on the other side of the world, young Hawaiian, Tahitian and Rarotongan girls were doing the same thing. Isn’t it amazing how anywhere on the planet that is hot, men have found a way to persuade the ladies to get their kit off and wiggle for them.
6 or 7 songs was all the our German friend’s pace maker could take and even the two Indian guys who got up to dance in the audience participation section looked hot and sweaty by the end. But again the timing was perfect, because as the music was turned down the sweet aroma of shisha drifted across the camp. They say one shisha is about the equivalent of 30 cigarettes. I’ve never smoked. It is a filthy, smelly habit, but shisha is a totally different story. How can something with apple or banana or strawberry in it be bad for you? I had coconut one night, but that was a bit like smoking suntan lotion. But even if you don’t smoke you have to try shisha at least once. With our 30 cigarettes worth of fruit tobacco consumed we were guided back to our 4x4’s for the trip home. It could have turned into a spontaneous review of the buffet dinner, but our driver magically found a road in what seemed the middle of nowhere and we soon found ourselves back at our hotel carrying, as my wife and I found out later, enough sand to make a small commemorative paper weight each.

Desert Safari Bollocks Part 1

It is cool how no matter what your country is blessed with in terms of natural resources the locals will invent a way to use them to get money out of tourists. Take New Zealand. As a country we are fully onto this. Our rivers are full of high-speed thrill seekers in jet boats and the wimps can go by raft. We’re blessed with tall bush covered mountains. So what did we do? Build bridges between them and push people off attached to thick rubber bands. We also have millions of acres of grassy hills. In the 70,s a few visionaries tried to take advantage of this with grass skiing. Never really took off. But in the 90’s a kiwi invented a big plastic ball you could climb into and roll down the hill in. Brilliant. In Cambodia, entrepreneurs want to offer tourists the chance to go digging for antique landmines. Hey, you work with what you’ve got.
In the UAE it’s sand. Lots of it, so it was natural that he tourist operators would look here for their inspiration. The Desert Safari is the classic UAE tourist trip. A work conference lunch buffet of sand themed delights.
First stop was the Camel Farm. Lucky we had a guide because if we hadn’t been told we were at a camel farm we might have mistaken it for simply a herd of camels standing near a couple of old sheds in the desert. There weren’t a lot of fences, but I don’t think camels have a lot of motivation for doing anything. Camels are a lot like dodgem cars at the Easter Show. If you take your foot off the accelerator and hop out they just kind of roll to a stop. The highlight of the camel farm stop was watching two camels doing their bit to boost the herd numbers. Ever wondered how a daddy camel climbs aboard mummy camel with her big bloody hump sticking up into his chest? With great difficulty and a lot of moaning and groaning it turns out. If someone in the porn industry ever makes a film for the hard of hearing they should record two copulating camels and use that as the soundtrack. I can’t imagine that getting it on in front of 18 Russians, two Germans and 4 kiwis is anyone’s idea of fun. Even if it was a threesome. The third party was the young guy (presumably young because the old guys pulled rank and made him do it). You know how those special forces troops hide near a target and guide the missile fired from the plane in with a laser pointer? Well this guy had a similar job. He had to guide the Camels ‘missile’ into the ‘target’. But instead of a laser pointer, he had to use his hands.

From the Farm of Fornication we were taken deeper into the desert for Sand Hooning. If you ever see a white second hand 4 wheel drive for sale and it turns out it was used in desert safaris. Don’t buy it. They get thrashed. The highly trained men behind the wheel make those vehicles do things and go places you suspect cars aren’t meant to go. I say highly trained because sitting in the back belted in and trying not to smash my head in the roof I was really hoping that our driver was highly trained.
There are no road marking out in the desert. They tried once but the wind kept blowing the sand away and it was just a big waste of spray paint. We traveled in a convoy of 4. We were second which meant we got to see the 4 by 4 in front of us go straight off the top of super steep sand dunes and then with the sound of the screams of the middle aged German lady filling our truck I got to turn and watch the group behind us roll down in our tracks. Imagine 7 mice in an empty beer can. 2 German mice, 4 kiwi mice and an Indian driver mouse. For the purposes of this analogy the beer can is one of those big super sized ones that used to be popular in the early 80s in Australia. Now imagine that can is tossed into the surf at Raglan. That was kind of what it felt like.

The desert safari is a precision operation, timed to the second, which I think the Germans really appreciated. We skidded to a stop at the top of a particularly large dune just in time to watch the sun set and from there it was on to part 3. The Desert Camp.

Stay tuned for the exciting wrap up of the Vegas Desert Safari. But I am off to the Dubai 7’s for 2 intensive days of booze and something else……. Oh yeah, rugby. So it might be a few days till I get back here.

Righto.