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Published: October 17th 2009
Day 2
On the second day, we woke up bright and early. Breakfast at 7:30 and check out at 8. Today, we were headed to the desert, but another 5 or 6 hour bus ride was ahead of us.
Finally, after a few rest stops and hours in a small seat, we reached the desert. When we got off the bus, straight ahead of us was a paved parking lot with a few buildings including a bathroom and gift shop, but when we turned around there were sand dunes as far as the eye could see.
To get to the dunes we had to take a lift. The lift was almost exactly like a ski lift, but it had a safety bar across our laps. After we got on, I was curious as to how we were going to get off; we had no skis or a snowboard to slide us off. Once we got to the end, we realized we just had to stand up and run so that the seat wouldn knock us over. Once we got off safely, we were herded to a small tent area where they were fastening sand booties onto our feet. I
figure they were to keep the sand out of peoples shoes.
Then, we headed onto the dunes. It was a gorgeous day: blue skies, a crisp wind, probably about 70 degrees. The dunes were beautiful, stretching on forever and ever. Our first goal in the desert was to find some camels, so we headed to the camel ticket both and purchased tickets for a camel ride. To ride the camels, we headed into a huge pen that was filled with camels, some sitting some standing, some spitting, some chewing. We were allowed to choose how many people were in train, and we all got to go together which was nice, but it would have been fun to have more control over the camels, we were just walked through the desert. The camels were surprisingly comfortable. We sat in between each hump, and the back one served as a sort of backrest. It was nice to just sit and cruise through the desert, enjoying the scenery. The way the wind blew a thin layer of sand over the dunes resembled water flowing all over, it was absolutely bewitching. I could have stared at it forever. But our camel rides had
to end, and we headed over to the ATVs.
The ATV ride was very short, but exhilarating. They take you around a track with huge drops and sharp turns, and they drive fast. Again, I would have rather had control and more freedom, but I guess that is unlikely with a rented ATV.
Finally we did sand sliding. When I heard that there would be sand sliding, I pictured something similar to snowboarding or surfing on the sand, but it ended up being more like a sled, which was different, but still fun. The hill down which we were pushed was rather steep, and I was afraid that I might eat it pretty bad. So we paid our fee, and got on the sand sled. They forced us to drag our hands behind us as we went down, and good thing, because as I tried to lift them, I lost total control and almost crashed. Once at the bottom, we walked around at the market, and got back onto the lift to head back to the bus.
By then it was almost sunset, and we stayed a while to watch the sun turn a brilliant orange, and
headed on a two hour journey to our hotel.
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Lift to the Dunes
anonymous
non-member comment
wow, all of the pictures are amazing! It seems like you had a very fun-packed day =)! Thanks for putting the blog up, it definitely provides more information than your emails heehee. love, jess