Al Ain

It turns out nobody really knows when the camel races take place. I found several websites that said Thursdays and Fridays from 9am to 2pm. I found one tourist guide that said 7-9am and 2pm to 4pm. So we went at 1:30, and there was clearly nothing going on. We drove our car down an empty stretch of track, took some pictures, looked around for some kind of info on the next race date (nothing) and moved on.

From there we went to Al Ain, another city in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. It's a nice, sort of bedroom community. It's a bit far for commuting, 140km away (although I hear that some people commute from Oman - another country, because housing prices are so bad in Abu Dhabi). There's no oil there, and no corporate offices of major companies. It's a ways off the coast. But it's got some interesting landscape features and it's the birthplace of Abu Dhabi inhabitation, and therefore the heritage and cultural heart of Abu Dhabi.

First we went up to the top of Jebel Hafeet, the Abu Dhabi mountain. It's a large rock sticking up out of the desert, with a viewing platform on top (and a hotel being built). PL pointed out that if we moved to the UAE, UberGeek could go mountain biking. But it's a bit steep and rough even for my nutjob. The back side of the mountain is about 10km from the Oman border, it was interesting to look down and see a clear line where the development of Oman butts right up to the edge of the UAE.

At the bottom of Jebel Hafeet there's a man-made oasis park. It's supposed to be a natural spring, but they haven't done a good job of the hiding irrigation system and the pipes that supply the waterfall and stream that the children play in. But it's pretty, and has lots of grass to lay in, play soccer on or just have a picnic. There are bbqs around and the air in the late afternoon was filled with the delicious smells of Middle Eastern meats being grilled. Yum, I was hungry! (but we didn't bring our own and didn't know anyone there, so we couldn't share.)

Since we didn't get to see camels at the race track, our driver took us to a camel souk, where camels are bought and sold. UberGeek likes to tease me about my fondness for foreign markets, so I told him I was buying a camel. Our dog gets lonely sometimes. Our driver warned us that the vendors would offer to take our picture with the camels, but then you'd have to pay them $20 to get your camera back. And sure enough, we got LOTS of offers to take a picture. They gave us some food to feed the baby camels and let us take our own pictures, for which PL gave them the expected tip.

Then we went to the reason Al Ain was where people first settled this reason, the natural oasis, which is now a palm tree plantation. It kind of seemed like a Disney forest, as all the plots are separated with well maintained cobblestone roads and walls, and it seems odd to have a full forest of palm trees in the middle of the desert. But it was here before the oil money allowed them to build the park at the base of Jebel Hafeet. Back in the day, it was the only source of shade and water for hundreds of miles.

For the evening, the guys wanted to go to a Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra concert at the old fort in Al Ain, so we had the driver drop us off at a nearby hotel to buy tickets. When we heard that the cheapest tickets were just under $100, I said I would hang out at the hotel or go to the mall while the concert was on. That's a bit much for a recently unemployed girl. So the woman said "Are you a student? You look like a student, and the student price is only 30Dh ($10)." So I bought a student ticket and it turns out that the price was basically negotiable, since several people there in their 50s had bought "student" tickets. The guys were fine with their 250Dh tickets.

We had dinner at the hotel before the concert. I bought a drink called a "Samoan Fog Cutter" in honour of my wedding in Samoa. It wasn't as tastey as the Blueberry Mojito, but I think there was actually the same amount of alcohol in that one glass as there is on the entire Samoan island of Savaii. I almost fell asleep at the concert!

After the concert, we drove back to Abu Dhabi and we are back at work today (short day?).

Blogger seems to be putting my pics backwards, but I think you can figure it out.