Sleeping under the Stars (and in the Sand)

We finally went camping a few weekends ago.  We had tried to go a few other times but the plans kept falling through.  Luckily we went when we did because I can already feel the weather warming up and getting more humid.
We met up with N&M at their place in the city.  Had some nachos then packed up the vehicle and we were off!  It took about 2-3hrs to drive to Liwa which is in the “Empty Quarter”—which is very aptly named.  After you get through the small town of Liwa, there’s not much more than camel farms and dunes, lots of dunes.

N, M, & Paul making the load transfer from our jeep to theirs

Map of Abu Dhabi.  You can see the city/island in the top right quarter of the map.  You can see from the satellite photo how big the dunes get out where we camped!

Typical seen from the highway as we drove towards Liwa

We used the Liwa hotel as a landmark.  When we got there we headed in just to see what the hotel was like.  It was really beautiful and so peaceful.  I loved the view from the pool through the arch.

This might be a nice weekend getaway sometime, so peaceful.  It just makes you want to slow down and enjoy God's beauty.

This is where things started to get interesting :)  We drove away from the hotel a little ways, but realize that the side road we had pulled of onto just dead ended at a camel farm. 

                                 Yep, it's wind & sandy!                                                                   This is the type of side road that we found our site off of.

So we backed out and drove on some more.  That’s when we came across this—now we really felt like we were in the middle of the arabian desert.

This might be my favorite photo from the weekend--there is no mistaking that we're in the Middle East!

We drove around for quite a bit trying to get away from the power lines and camel farms and eventually found this lovely spot.

So pretty!  I took sooo many photos of the dunes.

The men got out and started scouting the area for us.  It was just so surreal to be surrounded by dunes with nothing but the sky and sand to see.

N & P checking out the site

The way the sand fell from N & P's walk along the ridge

We decided to set up camp in the nook on the leeward side of the large dune to cut down on the wind a little bit.  M & I made a deal with the men that we would set up the tent if they unloaded the car and brought all of the stuff down to our site (we didn’t really want to drive down into the “valley” in case the sand was too soft).  Well we got the tent up without any problems—that is other than the fact that the tent was pretty cheap & flimsy so it didn’t stand up straight with the wind blowing on it.  It stayed like this all night long and into the morning.  We had to tie trash bags that we filled with sand to the corner because the stakes obviously wouldn’t stick in the stand.  In the process of the getting the tent up we had already given up on trying to keep it sand free since the wind was blowing like crazy and it was already filled with the little gritty particles.  That was one of my favorite things about camping in the desert, you don’t have to worry about getting your tent all muddy/dirty because it’s just sand and you can just sit on the ground next to the campfire without getting totally disgusting [well as long as you don’t count having sand in your hair, on your face, under your finger nails, etc. as disgusting :)]

Here's our campsite.  You can see the Jeep up top on the road & our beautiful tent standing so strong.

While we were unpacking, an Emirati drove by and stop and talked to the guys (they were up by the car) and then drove down and talked to us.  His English was about as good as our arabic, so it made for an interesting conversation.  I was warned by a coworker that Emiratis may come by while we’re out there because it’s not like we’re at a public campground, this is someone’s private land (although I have no idea how he knew we were out there).  We greeted him with “As-salam alaykum” (Peace be with you) which he returned (Alaykum as-salam).  He asked us if we were ok and if we had water—which we told him yes.  Then he looked a bit skeptically at our tent, lol.  But he told us that we set it up in the right spot to stay out of the wind and after many hand motions and “whooshing” sounds we realized that he was telling us that the wind would die down in a few hours as the sun set.  Finally, he asked if we had any whiskey :)  I was afraid that he was going to tell us to leave if we said we had any alcohol, so we said no.  But looking back on it,  I bet that was the main reason why he came down to see us because I would imagine that it would be very hard to find out in the empty quarter since there aren’t many westerners around. 
After that we finished setting up camp (which was really just unfolding our camping chairs).

Ready to relax!  We had to cover our cups to keep them from getting filled with sand!

Paul decided to provide us with some entertainment and “run” up the sand dune.  Well, let’s just say that the “run” quickly slowed to a jog, walk, then belabored trudging.  But not being one to be discouraged, Paul still decided to celebrate and pose for us at the top.

I love this guy

Then it was time to start preparing for dinner, and you guessed it, we had shish taouk!  yay!

Enough said :)

This is the staple meal whenever we're with N & M.  We cook up the marinated chicken and put it in pitas with hummus, cucumbers, tomatoes, & garlic sauce.  I'm gonna miss this stuff when we move back to the US.

After dinner it was campfire time!  I also had this amazing idea to make “monkey bread” which we used to make at camp when I was younger.  It’s basically just cinnamon, sugar, and biscuit dough which you wrap in tin foil and put on the fire to cook.  Well I’m sure they would have been delicious had a grabbed the foil instead of the saran wrap from home—oops!  We tried to cook it on the grill, but it was still so windy that it just covered in sand.  It actually hurt your teeth the try to eat it :(  After that we played some catch phrase and just hung out around the fire.

Boys & fire

Love this photo.  Good times.  Nish is still attempting to find a non "crunchy" part of the monkey bread.

I was the first one up in the morning, so I just got up and walked around the dunes taking photos of the sun as it was rising.  It was so peaceful and beautiful.  I could show you probably 20+ photos that I love of the dunes, but I’ll try to spare you from sand overload.

Campsite.  I'm out of words to describe how pretty/beautiful/peaceful it was.  But you get the drift.

The sand in Liwa is reddish.  It was beautiful the way the wind blew it around & I guess oxidized it.  The sand in Abu Dhabi is more tan.  The sand in Dubai is more black.

The boys were the last ones to get up.  We had a nice breakfast of bagels & cream cheese with fruit and juice.

Possibly one of the most uncomfortable nights of sleep.  The boys kept squishing us into the middle and it turns out that sleeping straight on sand is not at all enjoyable for the back.

Then it was time to pack up.  We decided to go ahead and drive the jeep down to the tent to make packing up easier since that what the Emirati had done and it looked pretty easy.  Yeah.  Well what would a desert camping adventure be without your car getting stuck, right?

Start of the adventure to get out.

Honestly, I think it took more than six times but you get the idea.

Yay!  I was getting nervous that we weren’t going to make it out.  I ran up the dune to catch up with them and hop in to find this…

I guess I celebrated a little too early

Yep, that doesn't look too good.

Well, I guess it’s time to let the air out of the tires & start digging.

Time to let the air out of the tires & dig.  My company should be proud of our safety measures--we used the caution cone on the road while we worked :)

Alright, let’s give it a go.  Nope, still not moving.  Ok, time to start walking to that distant tractor way, way down the road.

Still in there pretty deep.

How far away do you think that tractor is?

Wait?  Someone pulled up next to the guys—sweet!  An Emirati had been driving by and saw our sad souls.  He got out and offered to help us out.  First, he made note that someone hadn’t put the car in 4-wheel drive.  Hmmm.  I had thought that would be a given and didn’t think to ask the driver if it was in 4-wheel drive, apparently I should’ve asked :)

Our rescuer has arrived~

Well, it turned out that 4-wheel drive wasn’t enough.  We were deep.  Luckily he had a strap to pull us out with.  I wonder how many times he’s had to rescue “ignorant” westerners like us.

I love Paul's face in the bottom left corner--it's like he's pumped because he's the one getting us out ;)

We were so happy and so thankful for his help.  Not sure what we would have done if he didn’t come by although I really wasn’t too worried because it was still early in the day and we had plenty of water :)  But that wasn’t the end of the surprises!  Nope, Paul went to put the Emirati's strap back into his car in the backseat and surprise!

Hi scary bird.  Please don't peck my eyes out  (you can see his training bait behind the passenger seat)

After feeling confident that we weren’t going to try to drive back through the dunes, the Emirati took off.  I suppose to go train his falcon in the desert.  We started to trek back.  We all felt pretty gross.  You could rub your head and sand would just start falling out.  But right as we were getting back towards the town of Liwa I spotted the camel race track and saw some people racing.  The group were troupers and agreed to stop for a few minutes so I could go watch on take some photos.  It turned out that they weren’t actually racing but just training.  It was still fun to watch though.  I’d really like to go to a race someday, but they’re hard to find out about—it’s like you have to be a part of the underground camel racing group to know when and where the races are.  I’ll try again next year (the season’s over now since it’s getting so hot).

Camel Races! (or really just training)--hopefully I'll have a full blog post on this sometime next year

Overall, a fun trip which I hope we do again at least once a year.