Desert Safari

This blog will be relatively short since I'm waiting on pictures from some people *cough cough Daniel*.  We spent Friday in the desert which sounds terrifying, but it really was pretty cool! We were supposed to go dune bashing, but sadly some people weren't allowed to, so we went dune "riding."  Regardless, we went over sand dunes in Land Cruisers in a crazy fashion, blasting Shakira in a fully-ACed vehicle.

Typical picture with camel in the desert

When we got to our camping site, the first thing most of us did was head out to a huge dune west of us.  We took turns hopping on a snowboard to go sandboarding.  I was terrified, to say the least, but I hopped on anyway and took it for a spin. Super smooth sailing until the end...I didn't wipe out, but I didn't land in the most gracious of fashions.  The board rewarded me with a bruise that I'm sure will be quite lovely in the morning.

Lakshmi and me!

A lot of people got stung by jellies (read: boys splashing around haphazardly knowing full well what lie in the water), so we clung to the shore.  I looked around for the nearly invisible little suckers to avoid the welts that many of my friends were getting.  I seriously considered touching the top of one to see if Finding Nemo lied to me or not, but I chickened out at the end.  I decided I didn't want my own little Squishy...he could stay on the beach.

The night ended with a wonderful barbecue and coffee underneath a myriad of stars.  Seriously, I haven't seen such beautiful landscape since our ROTC group went to Lake Whitney (Joshua Vaughan you still owe me a football btw :P).  You had to move away from the tents a little bit to really see the Milky Way, but the pitch black night over the khaleej was magical.  Hopefully I'll get the chance to go again soon so I can pay attention to the sunset this time!

Buh-bye Dubai!

What a great weekend in Dubai! The Study Abroad group decided to go on a spontaneous trip to Dubai for the weekend, just because we could.  I say spontaneous because we really only planned it a little over a week in advance. To say, "I'm gonna hop on over to Dubai for the weekend," really just blows my mind. So. Flippin'. Cool!!

We landed in Dubai a little after midnight with plans to be up and out in the city by 8am, so we got less than four hours of sleep by the time we got to our hotel. Our hotel was super awesome (thanks Corrie!), as we had two bedrooms, three bathrooms, a balcony, a basket of fruit, a super huge TV, and a little kitchenette!

Friday morning we headed out to the Burj Khalifa, the tallest man-made structure in the world!! It shot us up 126 stories in about 42 seconds, or about as fast as Usain Bolt ran his WR 100-m dash. Slightly insane.  Fortunately, I went up the Empire State Building a few months ago, so I was a little more prepared to be a ridiculously large number of feet up.  We really only went up about 2/3 of the way because the rest of the tower is too narrow to stand on. Still, it was awesome to see Dubai down below and Iran across the sea.

 

Sorry the video is sideways...not sure how to turn it right side up!

After coming back down to earth, the gang split up around the Dubai Mall to see what adventures lied ahead.  Lakshmi and I indulged in some good ole' Canadian Tim Horton's coffee, took pictures of the Texas Roadhouse inside, and headed up to the interior sooq.  The boys later went skiing, as did Corrie, but Lakshmi and I went to an arcade instead.  We found a life-size fishing game akin to what we had as a child!! Lakshmi got a huge turtle as as prize, and we named it dufdah. Much to my chagrin, that actually means "frog." Thanks Wisam...

We headed for the famous Gold Sooq later, where naturally I got a silver cross necklace instead of a gold one. If I had a dirham for every time a guy asked if I wanted to see his assortment of Gucci, Prada, you-name-it bags and wallets, I would have been able to buy the Ferrari across the street.  Okay, so maybe not the Ferrari, but maybe the RR a little ways down.  After the sooq, Allen, Michael, and I headed back to the mall to watch the fountains.  It's a spectacular show similar to the one at the Bellagio in Las Vegas :)

Dang. Guess I'll go throw mine away...

The next day was definitely much more chill.  We all caught up on sleep and headed out to tour the city. Lakshmi and I headed back to the mall for the free WiFi and then made our way toward the renown Atlantis resort.  It was kind of a bummer because we couldn't go to the beach since we weren't staying there, but we did get a tour.  We saw the aquarium inside (COOLEST AQUARIUM EVER), the "super famous coffee shop - Starbucks," and then boarded the Atlantis Monorail.  It took us on a 15 min. tour of the Palm, allowing us to get some beautiful footage of Dubai's most exquisite resort.

Atlantis! That Ziggurat is like the Black Hole at Hurricane Harbor

One more trip to a sooq, wherein we passed two Maseratis, a Bentley, several Porsches, and a couple Ferraris - oh and some Rolls Royces, too. I swear this place is ridiculous.  Lakshmi and I bought the typical touristy Dubai bag, some Italian gelato, and headed back to the airport to meet up with the gang and come home!  Exactly what I needed in a weekend!