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.

Dubai part 1: Souks!

From Africa to the Middle East! Jeff had a business trip to Dubai and since school is out for the summer he asked us if we wanted to tag along and hotel crash. We gave him a resounding "YES!!!" Our friends the Smith family now live in Dubai. Of course you all remember Zoe, Julian, Em and Jamie from Korea. And there is a new little Smith on the way!
We spent a great first day in Dubai with the Smiths and got to see their neighborhood, shops ect. Dubai is over the top gorgeous, shiny and swanky. Like a chocolate Disney cupcake with triple frosting dipped in gold leaf with a cherry on top swanky. They are obsessed with having the biggest and the best of everything. Building the "World's Biggest" seems to be their national past-time. We got to see the Burj Kalifa, the world's tallest building. It doesn't look all that tall until you are miles away and realize that it is about 3x higher than the sky scrapers all around it!
On Friday the kids and I decided to go check out the oldest part of Dubai. We took the metro to a section of the city that had been restored to the way it looked traditionally.
We stopped for lunch in a great little open-air restaurant. There is a drink you can get all over Dubai that is kind of their signature drink. It's like a lemonade with frothy mint and it tastes out of this world. I am usually a water girl as I try not to drink my calories, but this was sooo good I must have had 10 of them while I was there. Sooo worth it!
Exploring the old section. Lots of cool buildings and little alleyways. Back in the day all the buildings had those towers that you can see behind the kids. This was for cooling purposes. AS IF that would have helped! We were there in winter and it was plenty warm. In the summer it frequently gets into the 120's. Yikes!
We started exploring some shops with all kinds of stuff in them. It smelled pretty darn good in the old section. Like a combination of cinnamon, sandalwood and incense.
We went through the Dubai museum and it was in an old fort with all kinds of huge displays and dioramas.
First stop: Weapons! We're really into weapons right now....
After the museum we headed toward the textile souk. A souk is a market. In Dubai instead of having markets that are like a mash-up of everything, the traditional markets are pretty specific to one kind of thing. So there's a gold souk, perfume souk, spice souk, ect. The textile souk sells table cloths, pashmina, shoes, and all kinds of clothing.
In the textile souk Sasha fell in love with a beaded hat and a pair of shoes and I liked a pair of sandals and an embroidered shirt. You have to haggle big-time in the old souks and I was ready to go. I told the guy that I would come up with my number for the 4 things and he could give me his. We were off from each other by 700 Dirhams! So game on baby.... 30 minutes later I had walked out twice, he was wringing his hands, and we FINALLY had a deal. The kids were like "WHAT just happened?!?". But it was all good fun and I told him that he was just lucky that it was me and not my Mom....
I got the kids a snow-cone because they were so good and patient during "hagglegate 2012". There is a bridge across the river but most people still cross on these old boats. Back in the day it was the only way across the river. So we jumped on board.
Lots of ladies in Burka. Some have their faces out, but many are totally covered up. We even saw women in swimming burka. What a drag that would be eh?
Boats crossing the river:
An old Mosque:
On the other side of the river we headed to the spice souk. It smelled AMAZING!! We had a lot of fun exploring with our noses. There were spices ground up and many spices sold in their natural form so it was cool to see something, not know what it was and then give it a sniff and yell "Hey, I know what this is!". There were also a lot of new smells, many of which made me wish I was a middle eastern cook just so I would know how to use them.
This guy asked us if we knew what this was:
It looked like a combination of glass shards, rock candy and fiberglass. Then he fired up a little brazier and put one of the crystals on it. It melted like a piece of ice and sent up a thick, perfectly white smoke. He showed us how to walk through it and breathe. It was medicinal eucalyptus and it totally cleaned out your entire head!
So much to take in!
The many twisting alleys of the spice souk:
Sasha smells different kinds of aromatics:
Next it was onto the Gold souk. Sooo much flash and glitter! We didn't make any purchases here and this is one souk where there's no haggling. The price of gold is set!
Sorry Sash, you picked out your souvenir in the textile souk. Should have waited....
Finally, we headed back to the beautiful, immaculate metro to ride back to our hotel. We had walked many miles and were very glad to be getting a train ride home!

Next, the Desert, Dunes, and a Camel trampling......

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Location:Dubai

Elephant Walk Safaris Part 2

When we last left off, we were riding elephants and trying to figure out the best way to sit (OUCH!) I found that if I curled my legs back I could put more weight on my shins and take the weight off my tailbone which was straddling a very narrow elephant spine. Until my legs fell asleep that is...
We got off the elephants and the handlers had them get down low and sit. This let us get up close without coming up to their knees!
Such cool creatures!
This one was Teddy and Jeff's Elephant.
We walked with the elephants all the way back to the lodge, watching them forage, asking questions and learning more about them. Then we got to give them a big "thank-you" by feeding them a bucket of their favorite pellets. You could drop handfuls of pellets into their upturned trunks....
...or yell "Trunk up!" and toss the pellets right into their mouths!
Teddy and Jeff feeding their elephant
After their snack the elephants went around the lake, stopping for a drink and some water play and then took off into the bush for some free time.
Every time we left the lodge we came back to a beautiful table and a delicious meal!
After lunch we took off in the Land Rover to go on a game drive. As it is still spring-time here the reserve was full of baby animals!
Impala. Check out the mom and baby to the right in the picture.
Teddy being our animal spotter:
These guys are called some kind of 'bok' or deer but I can't remember which kind. They had about 8-9 babies with them.
This baby giraffe was only one month old!
The game drive was awesome and we went all over. Some of the "roads" we traveled over were insane, and we went up really steep hills and over rivers. The driving was as fun as the game viewing!
When we got back monkeys were all over the place. This one even came into the lodge until he was chased back out. They are very bold and will come in to try to raid your food. Of course we know all about this because all the bananas in our kitchen got eaten by monkeys last week...
They are fun to watch though and a few of the females had little wrinkly-faced babies clinging on to their tummies.
The next morning we had a fabulous breakfast and then said good-bye to our wonderful hosts at the Safari lodge.
We all piled into the Land Rover for the short drive to the airstrip.
I got this cool shot of the Rover and the landscape as they were prepping the plane.
It was hard to tell who was more excited about our short flight out, the kids or Daddy!
All ready for take-off!
When we landed back where we had left our car we had a few friends waiting for us on the runway. Zebras and Wildebeest are just one of the hazards of African air travel!
For our first overnight safari experience in Africa, we had a pretty awesome weekend. It was a great way to celebrate Jeff turning 40!

VIDEO OF MONKEYS AND OTHER CREATURES HERE.

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