Sunday in Dubai

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Today was the scheduled camping day, however, it was not to be. The weather was threatening, spitting a little rain, and there were no camping spots where we intended to go. We did have a great day, despite that. We again started the day with breakfast at Costa Coffee, and then headed out into the desert. Our first stop was a grocery market, then a desert wadi. We stopped at the entrance to the wadi, and started hiking in, carrying our food. To be honest, I had thought of wadis as much more lush and with more water. However, our wadi was pretty much totally dry and dead, except for a few trees and a small trickle of a stream that managed to keep some frogs in business. We stopped near an old rock wall and had lunch on a flat rock, accompanied by about a million and one flies.

We then explored a couple of Oases and another wadi. Oases here don’t have much in terms of visible water. Seasonally, they will have some rain, and will partially fill some small reservoirs. Nonetheless, it is apparent that there is some water as date palms are in abundance, as well as some other limited vegetation. Near one of these oases, we found several very old, and abandoned small caves and stone structures which appear to have been lived in at some point. We have no specifics on them.

Next, we drove along the beach, to where we were supposed to be camping. No dice, though. Because of the Eid and the fact that is was National Day, the entire beach was packed with people. We were out of luck. The weather was closing in on us, so we decided to just head back to Dubai for the night. We packed up and headed home.

Once there, we had a simple, yet fun, meal of homemade crepes. We put jam, eggs, and/or cognac in them. Jerome explained that making crepes is genetic with the French. . . they learn to make crepes before learning to speak! He learned well. Following dinner and a little more chatting, we crashed for the night.

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