Wadi Amyiah Trip

This Friday we went out to one of the more challenging wadis. The description in the guide book kept saying 'here it looks like you can't go any further...'

Indeed, as soon as we found our way into the riverbed it looked like a dead end. A little stream trickled through huge boulders, there were palm trees narrowing the path and the route was blocked by a dam further along! But it was supposed to be doable, so we did.

Navigating the Wadi

First there was a lot of scouting, frowning at rock face angles and testing of water depths by dipping toes. Then one car went ahead, three people on foot in front to direct the wheel placement, look for possible slippage and try to remember optimum tracks for the following vehicles. This helped enormously and the second car had little problems. After that the drive was great, a few very uneven spots, but the track was clear - mainly because the canyon walls of 30 meters on either side didn't allow for derivation.

We stopped for lunch with a bunch of goats looking on, but didn't stay because the flies were too much. On the way home we stopped to eat grilled corn at a market on the wayside.

Wadi Driving in Hatta

For the first time this autumn we have made it out of town for a drive.

Until the last few weeks it's still been too hot in the day time to be fun, specially since we never seem to be able to get going till 11 am for some reason. But today we got out and took some friends to Hatta Pools. We went in three cars, Kelly, Mike and the kids in a Ford Explorer, our Range Rover and Peter in his trusty Jeep Cherokee. We hoped that some of the rain we have been getting lately |(not in Dubai, but nearer the mountains) had replenished the pools enough to swim in. As it turned out the rest of Dubai had the same idea. There were barbies and picnics everywhere - despite Ramadan! But even the crowds and the excessive rubbish they had left behind couldn't disturb the peace of the pools. We swan, we paddled, we floated, then went for a drive.

The wadi extends for miles in a deep canyon, criss-crossed by shallow pools and littered with boulders. There wer a few points where we thought we had to turn round, but squeezed through or scrambled across anyway.

As it turned out Kelly is a natural wadi-driver, fearless on her first trip into the wild. We stopped a lot to look at the scenery, once saw a frog, and while photographing it, a thin black dangerous-looking snake slithered between my legs in the water and disappeared up the hillside. After that we decided it wasn't safe to go back into the water...

An Iftar Invitation - more Ramadan stories.

A friend invited us to break fast with her and her family a few days ago.

Dina and her family are Lebanese-Palestinians who have lived in Jordan, Egypt and Abu Dhabi before arriving in Dubai. They were kind enough to invite us for Iftar and put up with our barrage of questions about Ramadan, traditional foods and the finer points of fasting.

We arrived at 5.30pm. Louisa had fasted for the day, too, to get a feeling for the sacrifice fasting entails. This meant that she had not eaten or drunk anything since 5am that morning. Those of us who weren't fasting were offered drinks such as home-made raisin juice with rose water and apricot juice, which are traditional at this time.

Louisa was put out of her misery by an offer of laban and dates, a standard way to break fast. We then went to table, which was laden with a real feast. There was a clear order to the dishes: first lentil soup with lemon, then a salad made with lots of different chopped herbs, tomatoes and crunchy crisps of dried flatbread. After that we all dug into a variety of dishes, roast chicken with spiced rice; an aubergine and sour cream bake, savoury pastries and lots of hummous. The olive oil used in the dishes came from the family grove in Lebanon and was imported specially.