A unique Dubai Experience...

Sunday was the one day that Jeff was able to hang with us because he had to work most of the trip. We spent the morning relaxing by the pool and then took a walk down the beach. Dubai has a very cool and futuristic skyline. New buildings are always going up and each one is trying to be bigger, and better than those around it.

Lots of Arabic all over. Check out the Coke truck!

Then at 2pm we headed out into the dunes for a desert safari!

First stop was a camel farm. Our guide told us that we could go say "hi" while he let some of the air out of the tires for our dune driving. He said they were all very tame and calm. So we walked over to a bunch of camels, and started getting to know them.

They were very curious and friendly. They actually came up to us and would nudge you and kiss you.

What a face!

This camel took a liking to Teddy. He started nudging him and popping him gently on the head and following him around.

"Hi Ted!" It was actually very cute until the camel reared up, smacked Ted to the ground, trampled him and took off... Tedd was screaming, I was screaming, the guide was calling 911, it was epic.

I watched the whole thing go down and Teddy was not doing anything to set the animal off. He was just standing there very nicely while the camel "got to know him". It turns out that he got knocked around by the camel's knees and not actually stepped on so he was fine (Thank GOD we were on soft sand) but it was very scary and a huge wake-up call for all of us. We go all over the world and interact with all kinds of creatures and they are all WILD. Makes you re-consider holding the baby cheetahs at the lion park when things like this happen. I had the adrenaline shakes for the next 2 hours...

Next we were off into the sand driving over some INSANE dunes. VIDEO HERE. I have to say it was waaaay scarier that it looks in the video. But that also could have been me already maxed out with stress because of the camel.

 Check out the tilt! I thought we were going to roll the vehicle a bunch of times!

We stopped to look at some big hills and meet a falcon.

Check this guy out. Proud to be an Emirate:

Leaping off the dunes!

Sand as far as the eye can see....

Then we drove to another spot to watch the sun set.

Desert evening....

Awww....

On to our final destination, a desert "camp" for dinner and entertainment. But first we had to ride a camel. Because who gets to ride Elephants in Africa one weekend and camels in Dubai the next?!? Teddy got right up there on that camel - I couldn't believe it. I thought he would be sworn off camels for life!

We headed into the desert camp,

...found a table and grabbed some appetizers.

And the kids and I got henna done!

Hey, what's in that hookah anyway?

For entertainment there was a whirling dervish and a belly dancer. The dervish had lights all over his skirts and a double layered skirt and he was able to do some neat things with them. Nothing like "+ing" it for 2012 right? You can check him out in the video. But of course the boys liked the bellydancer the best. We also got to try out "sandboarding". It was a nice evening, minus the camel trampling.