The Sands of Time

After quickly grazing on some of the tasty treats from our executive floor lounge, we race back downstairs to be collected for our desert safari at 3:00pm. It occurs to me that I'm absolutely shattered - waves of tiredness are breaking over me at the high tide mark, but ah well, I'll sleep when I'm dead, so there's plenty of living to be getting on with until then.

I’ve been looking forward to this desert excursion ever since I booked the trip, and cannot believe that it’s actually happening now.

The desert gets really cold at night, so we rug up in comfortable clothes. Unfortunately the desert doesn’t particularly care about fashion, but I do manage to pop on a bit of a sequin Arabian style top underneath my hoodie, just so I feel a little bit girly. We can’t have the romantic adventure of camel riding under the desert sky completely obliterated by having to wear a tracksuit and runners. That’s just not cricket, although one does really need the tracksuit if one is to avoid hypothermia, which probably would obliterate the romantic adventure faster than a bad hair day.

Our Arabian Adventures driver today is Sunil, a lovely lad who knew that we were over for the Collingwood game, but who also didn’t know a thing about football. Strangely enough, Sunil would also be one of the few Indians on the planet not obsessed with cricket. Of course he knows how to say the words Sachin Tendulkar with precisely the correct inflection and tone of reverence, but that’s about it. I’m immediately suspicious – can a girl trust an Indian who doesn’t love cricket? Well, I guess we’re about to find out.

On the day to the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, where we’ll be surfing the sand dunes, the others and I give Sunil a bit of a rundown about how to play AFL and the virtues of Collingwood over all the other AFL clubs. Of course it’s always a bit tricky trying to explain the rules of a behind when it’s actually a beside, and before too long, your man Sunil was completely confused. However, given that he is male after all, that’s to be expected. In the absence of small words and diagrams, there’s not a lot that could be done. I amuse myself by explaining the finer points of ‘jumper punching’ to him and demonstrate using the back of his shirt. Poor Sunil. If he could have opened the door, flung himself from the moving vehicle and run screaming into the desert, never to be seen again, I think he gladly would have done so. However, he was unfailingly polite and assured us that, now he knows all about AFL, he will be sure to watch it whenever he can on TV.

On the way out to the DDCR, which is on the road to Al Ain, we pass the outlet mall, which Sandy, an Australian girl we met at the match, told us about. We beg Sunil desperately to stop there on the way back so that we could forage out some bargains, but he refused, saying that we must adhere completely to the schedule and no unauthorised deviation from that schedule was permitted. I tried the pitiful pleading look and was about to downshift into the ‘crying girl’ persona, but he was totally unmoved. It was pointless wasting precious liquids from my body, so I refrained. Men are such cruel beasts. I commit the outlet mall to memory, knowing that there will be no chance in Hell that we’ll get back there on this trip, but look out for next time. My next trip to Dubai (which I hope will be in horse racing season) will be much longer than this one and will absolutely, positively involve copious amounts of shopping. Oops, I think I can feel interest rates rising again. Best phone the Reserve Bank and have a little chat with the Governor.

But, I digress (shopping will do that). We arrive at the DDCR and are permitted entry. All up tonight there will be about 250 people joining us. Apparently it’s like this every night, with some evenings hosting over 300 people. Who would have thought simple sand could be such a revenue raiser?

Not long after we get inside the reserve, all vehicles stop and the tyres are deflated about half way. This apparently is done to ensure safety whilst we’re careering about the dunes, and stops the cars from rolling. Excellent. Hadn’t even thought about the car possibly rolling until that was pointed out. Think of anything but camels.

Unfortunately also at this point, I realise to my horror that my walnut sized bladder is full to bursting and there’s not a ladies room in sight. I ask Sunil whether there’s a toilet anywhere near by and he calmly points towards a large clump of bushes and smiles at me. At first I think he’s having me on, and I laugh along with him until it dawns on me that, no, he’s not having me on. I’m having myself on apparently, which as we know by now is the usual state of affairs. It’s just as well that I (being a girl with a ‘delicate system’) always travel with a spare packet of tissues and antibacterial hand gel. At this particular moment in time, it’s more precious than water. Mary-Rita needs to go as well, so we warn everyone not to come anywhere near us and head towards the bushes. Mary-Rita finds a safe spot and I act as lookout. However, just as she’s taking care of things, the lovely Nathan decides to wander up a sand dune very close to where we are. He was walking away from us and obviously hadn’t heard us say anything about attending to the call of nature. Nathan has had a tendency to wander off throughout the whole trip, so this was not a surprise, but it was however a particularly inconvenient moment for us ladies. I decide to engage some mental telepathy and send him a clear message - Turn. Around. Now. Nathan. And. You. Will. Be. Killed. Painfully. Luckily, this seems to get through, as he continues along his merry way without causing us any embarrassment. Once Mary-Rita sorted herself out, I decided that perhaps her spot wasn’t so safe after all and I hunted down another more concealed one in the other direction. However, it wasn’t as concealed as I thought, and I was also in grave danger of discovery when another group of people wandered a little too close for comfort. Nothing quite like being caught with your knickers down mid-stream to put the fear of God into you. However, all was well in the end and we escaped unscathed. It brought back memories of being at Entabeni Reserve in South Africa, where each morning we’d go for a pre-sunrise drive in search of the lions. The rangers would load us up with coffee and tea to keep us warm in the early-morning frigidity, so by the time we actually made it to the area where the lions were supposed to be, I was so desperate to pee I could cry. There was a particularly large clump of bushes where everyone would go, and this bush became my friend for 4 days running. I discovered on the last day that the lions were in fact only about 200 metres away on the other side of a large clump of grass trees directly in line with our jeep, and that lions can run 22 metres per second. You don’t need to be Einstein to work out that had a lion been in the mood for a bit of a snack, there'd be barely enough time to raise your head let alone to pull up your knickers before it had ripped out your jugular. Comforting thought that.

However, in this environment we were safe, as I’m certain the camels weren’t any threat to us unless they decided to walk straight over us and crush us to death.

Hop back into the cars and head towards the dunes. Sand dunes are much bigger than they first appear to be, and at times our jeeps were almost vertical. We go pretty fast over these dunes and sometimes the cars are almost going sideways. I was terrified, as I now couldn’t get the thought of the car rolling over out of my head, but it was good fun. It’s a case of “this will be enormous fun if I don’t die in the process”. Of course we were all put to shame when Gladys was squealing like a toddler and having the time of her life. She’s 90.

We had 2 guys in our car, and to preserve their dignity, I won’t say which two. However, one of them was feeling mighty sick, and we had to slow the car down so that he didn’t disgrace himself in front of all the girls. That would be a ribbing he'd never get over. We had a drink stop, at which point Mary-Rita and I decided to change cars and swap places with some of the boys. Unfortunately, our friend did eventually become sick and he was unable to enjoy the evening, spending most of it lying down in the back seat of our jeep.

During the dune ride, we came to the camel farm, where all the camels are housed. We had some photos taken with them. The camel herd told us that we could hug our camel in the photo if we wanted to. I decided that was a great idea, although Mary-Rita wasn’t convinced. She contented herself with just patting its neck while I gave it a hug. However after about 10 seconds of this, the camel spied the water trough and decided to give us the flick. It took off at an impressive rate with me still clinging to its neck, much to the amusement of the camel herd and everyone around us. Good photo though.

We then found the tent where there was a falcon with its keeper. We lined up to get our photos taken with it, but had to do them again as neither Mary-Rita nor myself particularly liked the first round of pictures that were taken. We did end up getting some good photos and realised afterwards that we were supposed to give a donation to the falcon’s keeper. I managed to creep back in and slip some money into the box.

There are also goats kept at the farm and we spied some babies frolicking about. They’re so gorgeous and the goat herd fetched one and brought it over for us to hold. Again, another donation, but it’s a good photo opportunity. Peter took my photo and managed to cut off the top part of my head, but at least we got a close up of the goat. Which goat you might ask?!

After we’d gotten all of our photos and the Bedouins had relieved us of some of our money, we piled back into the cars and reached a point where we could have a stunning sunset experience. All of the cars stopped in one big gathering, and everyone race up the sand dunes (have you ever tied to run up a sand dune? It’s really hard!) to reach the top and grab photos. At this point we spied a tourist group of Japanese all wearing their ‘SARS masks’ – what’s that about??? Have a little chuckle as one Japanese girl fills up an empty bottle with sand so that she can take home some of the Arabian desert. God love the Japanese. They’re such odd little biscuits.

We got some lovely sunset photos and took turns acting the fool by crawling up the dunes like Burke & Wills. It was great fun and those memories are the special ones that life is all about making. One of the things that stands out in my mind is how the sand looks almost like mist as it's being blown about by the wind. It swirls around over the top of the dunes with a life of its own and makes nature-perfect patterns in the rest of the dunes. It's just beautiful and something one could watch for ages if one had the time.

Eventually we arrived at the Bedouin camp where we were to have our dinner. It’s very impressive – large Bedouin tents with long rows of tables and cushions to sit on; lots of gorgeous Persian rugs on the ground (Mary-Rita and I paid close attention to the colours and texture of the rugs in preparation for our ‘carpet shopping’ trip tomorrow); lanterns hanging from various points; a water well; a large cooking area and some very impressive toilet block facilities, made in the style of the ‘wind tower’ buildings we’d seen earlier that day at the Bastakia site.

We settled in to our cushions and immediately headed towards the ladies who were doing the henna painting. We’d been given the good oil on that the day before by Michael and James, who’d already done the dune dinner. As the camel rides are the first thing we see when we arrive at the camp, everyone lines up for those immediately, and therefore the henna painting lines become quite long later in the evening. We got our henna done first and could then relax for awhile before we had dinner and went on the camel rides.

I chose to have a floral design painted down from my forearm to the tip of my fingers. The ladies are very skilled at this and they were just delightful. More donations. The henna goes on black with the consistency of toothpaste. It’s a stain, so you need to let it set for about 30 minutes or so, before the top ‘crusts’ (just like toothpaste if you leave the lid off) and falls off. You’re then left with a lovely henna design on your skin. It lasts for about a week. The ink these ladies used was brown, and although I think I would have preferred the maroon or the black, it was still really attractive. We got loads of photos of it so we can remember the experience long after the henna has faded.

At this point, Nathan, God love him, decided he liked several designs, so he kept going back and getting more – snakes, scorpions and the like. Unfortunately the ladies didn’t know how to do a magpie, so we all missed out on having a special Collingwood henna tattoo.

Dinner was a feast of roast meats, salad, tabouleh, hommus and the like. Very nice indeed. As I’m on the dry for Lent, I chose not to have any wine, but the boys were delighted to find that Fosters beer was available, so they got stuck into that.

Mary-Rita, Peter, Grant and I all decided that there was going to be a bit of a queue for the dinner buffet, so this was the perfect time to go for a camel ride. Turns out we were right, as there was nobody else around and we got to go around twice, which was great fun. Our camels were feeling a little boisterous and kept trying to bite each other, but as they had a tea cosy on the end of their snouts, this could have been a bit tricky. Maybe that’s the camel version of jumper punching?

It’s probably not most people’s life-long dream to jump on top of an animal that’s 5 times human size and weighs 20 times your own weight, and try to get it to move at your will when it would rather be lying down sleeping. But hey, we’re in the Arabian desert, it’s night-time, the sky is full of stars and there’s camels to be ridden. Who’s not going to do that??? It was a great experience and our camels were very well behaved under the circumstances. While we were riding around, the words to that old song, “Ahab the Arab” kept going through my mind, which provided me with some secret amusement.

After the ride, we popped back into the tent, grabbed our dinner (without queuing) and settled back at our table. Very fulfilling.

After dinner came the belly dancing display, and loads of people, including our own twinkle toes, Cliffy, got up to dance and shake out the ache. People were having a wonderful time and it was a really lovely evening. Very touristy of course, but you really just have to do it.

At one point all of the lights in the camp were turned off and we could stand around (or lie around) to look up at the stars in the night sky. You really don’t realise how much the city dulls the sky until you’re out in the blackness of the desert or country where you can see the sky clearly. It’s just beautiful. Of course being Australians, the first thing anyone does when they look into the night sky is search for the Southern Cross. So, everyone was busily looking for The Southern Cross and The Saucepan, which prompted some hilariously animated debate as to whether The Saucepan actually forms part of the Southern Cross. At this point several of us started delving back into the deepest recesses of our minds to access the high-school files and remember what we’d been taught. This proved a little difficult for those who’d had a skinful of beer or wine on board. I’ve learned from bitter experience that the deepest recesses of my mind are not a place I like to go alone, as it’s scary down there. From what I can remember of astronomy, The Saucepan is actually the constellation of Orion, it doesn’t form part of the Southern Cross, and the Southern Cross can only be seen in the Southern Hemisphere due to the specific tilting of the earth’s axis. In some very southern parts of the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Cross can be seen, but it’s very low on the horizon and doesn’t have the same effect as it does for us in Australia. How I can actually remember that off the top of my head completely escapes me, but there you go. Mental note to self – Google it when you have a moment to see if that’s right.

Of course the evening wouldn’t have been complete without a chorus of “Good Old Collingwood Forever”, which was belted out with huge gusto (fuelled I think by alcohol and exhaustion). Many of the Collingwood staffers came along on this excursion so there were even more of us than usual to fly the magpie flag. We had a lovely time talking with Gary Pert (former Fitzroy and Collingwood great player and Collingwood FC board member) about the South African and Dubai trips and the upcoming planned trip to Ireland. Perty is a really great guy and it’s easy to see why he’s been such an asset to the Club.

After a huge day, it’s difficult not to fall asleep in the back of the car, which is precisely what I do. Wake up in time to see some of the city nightscape as we head back to the hotel.

One more round of “Good Old Collingwood Forever” in the elevator on the way up to our floor and then it’s goodnight and off to our rooms to dream of magic flying carpets.