Bradbury-Hayden Visit Pt.3

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So Garry had left and 3 of us remained. After a good night’s sleep we decided to..... Relax at the beach. Again we went to Jumeirah Beach Park and played our usual game of treading water whilst trying to catch/throw a football/tennis ball. This usually resulted in the mass consumption of sea water and a feeling of swimming many lengths. After showing off my amazing football skills we decided to have a walk around the Dubai mall. Whilst there, we ate some food at one of the restaurants and decided it would be a good idea to eat outside. We were wrong. Although we had some good views of the fountains and the Burj Khalifa, it was soooo hot! I immediately regretted it and spent our time there sweating a lot. I then treated myself to some Bose headphones and we returned home.
Cue another week at work whilst Dave and Scott got even more ahead with their tanning. On one evening though, we went to the Golf club on the Arabian Ranches for some tea. This was at the recommendation of Scott, who was raving about the steak and Guiness pies there. Soon after I was confronted by a bowl the size of my head filled with golden brown pie, it was huge. Now during our meal we were joined by George and Debbie and got talking about a certain event at a certain hotel bar.... This led to Debbie accepting a punishment of being driven home in the boot of the stang. Bearing in mind that the ranches has about 20 speed bumps between us and the Hayden’s residence, you can imagine we were pretty excited to hear Debbie’s reactions over said bumps. It didn’t disappoint, and I may have also been a bit more aggressive over certain bumps but it was worth it to hear the muffled shouts coming from the boot.
The weekend was here once again and on the agenda was a trip towards Oman for some camping/quad biking/scrambling. The supplies were packed, the beer was on ice and we were off to what was an uneventful journey to our camp site..... Ok ok maybe I took a wrong turn on the roundabout, which resulted in us driving down a long stretch of road covered in sand, and us fearing we may get stuck. AND maybe I took another wrong turn on the same rounabout crossing into Oman a day early, worrying they might uncover the stash of Heineken we had in the cool box. However it added to the fun and eventually we found our spot, about 3-4 miles before the fateful roundabout, oops. Taking the drive down there was a joy in itself, as the towering buildings of the Dubai landscape eventually shrank and disappeared, the roads opened up with nothing but sand either side. We set up camp and quickly got to getting some BBQ on the go whilst enjoying a cold beer. Nightfall came and we spent our time wandering the empty dunes of the desert in search for poisonous animals, but came back empty handed. This led to us satisfying our needs by watching large ants fighting with flies and a curious beetle that covertly snuck up on us. I shone my head torch towards its direction and it knew it had been rumbled and quickly ran away; this happened several times and kept us amused. Other highlights included my chair breaking (it only cost 4 quid) and me waking myself up in the night thinking someone had set the tent on fire.
Morning. 7am in the morning to be precise. We awake and poke our heads outside hoping to see some snakes or scorpions surrounding our tent, waiting. No such luck. We packed up and made our way to the Oman border for the second time. Here we find out that tourists of the UAE aren’t supposed to go into Oman, but after greeting him in Arabic he looked the other way. So there I was driving through Oman with two illegal aliens in my car. I’d done a bit of reading on a very popular wadi with a large waterfall and cool rock pools that I wanted to go to. We saw signs for the area we thought it was in, only 60Km away loads of time to get there. Still driving, and signs are few and far between; luckily we have the beautiful views of the mountains either side of us, and a perfect, quiet road ahead of us. We pass through several small villages and farms, but with no luck. It was good to see the great landscape but frustrating we couldn’t find it. So back the way we came and we pulled over by some camels. Here we stealthily snuck up on them to get some good photos, a real David Attenborough moment, well I say we I mean me. So the camels immediately see Dave and his offensive hat and quickly ran away. We retreated back to the car and continued driving through the mountains until Dave had chosen a suitable one to scramble up. When he had we set about getting to the top, continuing our search for poisonous creatures. We found a gecko in a small cave about half way up, not what we were looking for. Me and Dave continued to the ridge at the top and the views were amazing, it’s crazy how this landscape just pops up out of the ground as you cross the border. Along the ridge I saw another cave so we headed over and found nothing, however there was a chimney like tunnel going up through it, probably big enough for a human but neither of us had the balls to venture up it. So we returned empty handed again back to the bottom, where Scott was waiting for us, burning away. An eventful trip over the border, now back across to do some quad biking.
We arrived at the place which was just down the road from where we camped the night before, and paid for our bikes, not before having to go over a bridge which had sand on it and the stang getting stuck... Scott pushed us out. We were very surprised at how cheap they were and how long you got them for (£50 for 1 hour). Now this wasn’t some crappy little track either, this was one hour out in the untouched desert flying over dunes and following the guide who didn’t hold back. Oh and might I add that helmets were optional, so obviously we didn’t wear any..... The landscape was amazing and at one point on top of a huge mountain-like dune, all we could see was desert. No roads, no quad bikes hire building, just desert, amazing. At one point I was a bit behind the others and didn’t see the route they took and was thrown off the quad, but it was onto sand so it was all good, except it was bloody hot! The only downside to the whole experience was the lack of gloves, so we all got blisters on our hands, it was worth it though.
Buzzing from our quad experience, we jumped back into the stang, back to the towering buildings of the city. The plan for tonight? Watching Omid Djalili live at the Madinat. He was top and the buckets of beer were in full flow. My only complaint was it was outdoors and I had on jeans and a shirt, mistake! But it didn’t stop me enjoying it. After he finished, we moved onto 360 bar via a walk along the sea front. There we (I) went through numerous bowls of nuts and we tried a drink known as the tequila submarine. It was howling and none of us finished them. We were however, entertained by a member of the bar staff messing around with the bouncers, doing some Bruce Lee s*** on them. They just got him in a headlock.
The final day of the final weekend for Dave and we visited the beach of the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, where you have to pay to use it. However you get free towels and a quiet, hassle free beach with a pool that has a bar IN it! So we spent the day relaxing and topping up the tans before heading back to the apartment to get ready for this evenings meal. On the menu tonight was the Polo Club restaurant, just up the road from where I live. Here we waited for what must have been a lifetime for some service, but when it came it was good. The food was good and they even had on Open Season 2 on the projector screen, what more could we want! So ended the night, I was back to work and there were only a couple of days left before we would lose another member.
Dave’s lat day, and we decided to grab some food before his flight. We returned to the Mall of the Emirates and visited the Lebanese Karam Beirut. Here they have windows looking into the mall’s Ski Dubai, the world’s largest indoor ski slope; it’s in a mall..... So we enjoyed some good Lebanese food and watched kids falling down the ski slope. A good end to a great couple of weeks. We took Dave to the airport and he was gone, another member down but 1 remained

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