Leaving Abu Dhabi heading West toward Saudi Arabi you drive for over an hour. Then you turn South into the Empty Quarter, which seems more like the Empty Ninety Percent. Again you drive for over an hour and you go through a small town and head even deeper into the Emptiness. Then, once you've finally arrived in the Total and Complete Emptiness, you come upon the Camel Festival, which includes camel auctions (the most expensive camel was sold for about $ 54 Million US), a camel beauty contest, camel races, and a camel flea market which is a strip of tent shops selling things from fire wood, to a laundry service, to a medical clinic, to camel "bling bling" which includes decorations, saddles, and everything a camel could ever want or need. We drove into the camel festival, and had to stop at the bathroom for the girls, which turned out to be an out-house with gold plated hardware. Then we went on to the heart of the camel festival activities where we got a little too adventuresome and got stuck in the sand. Within ten minutes we had about 10 four wheel drive vehicles and about 30 Emerates surrounding us. They basically took over the rescue of our vehicle, coming in with tow ropes and four wheel drive vehicles and jumping into the driver's seat to pull the vehicle back out of the sand. It was an overwhelming surge of help.
We then went on a photo spree where we took hundreds of camel pictures. At one point one of the camel herders brought a baby camel up to the side of the car for the girls to pet. Of course they freaked out when the camel stuck his head through the window. And Bert wasn't too thrilled when the camel kicked the side of the rental car and left some scratches on it so we would remember him. From there we went kite flying with a kite that was a throw back to an Australian boomerang because it would go straight up in the air and the come straight back down again, aiming at the person who released it (which was me) and after the tenth try at that we realized this wasn't going to work. From there we went to a make-shift cultural center where we saw Arabian artifacts and souvenirs displayed.
But our adventure wasn't over. After the camel festival we drove deeper into the "Emptiness" to areas where there was nothing but nothing. We became dust bowls of sand, but it was also a different kind of unique beauty that you can't see anywhere else. And then we headed back to Abu Dhabi for a badly needed shower. And that was the Camel Day that was ----- POP
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| the girls playing on the dunes |
