Grand Adventure!

Tuesday, March 27th—We got up this morning and went to Jumeirah Mosque. Through the Sheikh Mohammed (he’s the big kahuna here – “Sheikh Mo” as he lets us call him) Centre for Cultural Understanding, they open the mosque to non-Muslims for tours and information (though women must still dress conservatively AND cover their heads before entering. I summoned up my Jackie O. persona and headed in). It was really interesting to gain a deeper understanding of Islam. Muslims are very committed to their religion. They are called to pray 5 times each day, based on the lunar system. You can hear the call to prayer all over town when it is time for them to pray. The earliest one is around 4 a.m. (before dawn) and the latest right now is around 8-9 (after dusk). Every home must have a mosque within walking distance so you see them EVERYWHERE. In Dubai, with a population of 1.5 million, there are 560 mosques (and we thought we had a lot of Southern Baptist churches!).

Hank in front of Jumeirah Mosque.
After lunch at Basta Art Café (in Bastakiya – the old area where the first Iranian settlers lived) we went to do some shopping in the souks down by the creek (river). We took an abra (boat) over to the souks. Here in Dubai there are 3 main souks: spice, textile, and gold. As you walk down the street you have people constantly telling you to come in there store (you hear about a 1,000 times a day, “you want copy handbags – Prada, LV – how about a Rolex - - it’s pretty funny! Let us know if you want a Rolex – It might say RolAx on it - - but it will be cheap!). When you go in they definitely want you to buy something. If you don’t like the price they want you to haggle until you will buy it. A lot of times the people will say, “If you are happy with price I am happy.” At one particular store, the guy grabbed Hank in this long embrace. Hank was a little uncomfortable – I think the embrace was about two minutes longer than he liked. They will do anything for a sale. It is very hard to haggle with them in the first place because of the prices are unreal to begin with. In one particular store Amanda bought 4 pashminas and a shirt. I thought we had spent a lot of money but when I walked out and converted dirams to dollars we had spent less than $20. We made a lot of friends in the souks! Spend a little money, make some friends! After buying they want to talk and talk and talk and shake your hand (or even a hug – though Hank was happy with just one a day!).
Some of our new friends from the souks. The guy on the left owns one of the shops and we had quite a tasting there - saffon, dried shrimp, some other scary stuff that we didn't recognize. He also took us to his "relations" shop for Iranian ice cream. Good stuff! We're still not totally sure what's in it but we think it has something to do with rice and lemon juice. We think. :)

At 3 o’clock is where the adventure really began. We decided to do an excursion: a desert safari. It starts with (hopefully, as you will later see) an experienced driver picks you up and drives you to the desert along with 20 other cars. Once there it gets crazy. They drive like a bat out of hell, go on two wheels, and go down huge embankments. Definitely an adrenaline rush. On the way out to the dunes we were guessing about how many cars flip on a typical safari when we looked over to see the car right beside us rolling down the dune we’d just descended! What happens: all the people jump out of the Toyota LandCruiser, laugh, the drivers flip the car back over, and leave it there. After 2 hours of dune bashing (and some serious carsickness for Amanda [though still totally worth it!]) you end up in “camp” in the middle of the desert – there you can have dinner, ride a camel, watch belly dancing, henna painting, sisha pipe smoking, and finally they take you home at 9:30. The crazy thing is that this 6 ½ hours of fun only cost you $50 a person here. Back home this would cost somewhere around $200 to $300.

There were probably 20 LandCruisers like this one on our trip.

Camels! Camels! Everywhere!!! As we were awaiting the other cars to arrive there were abour 25 camels that walked right past us. We stopped to watch the sunset and climb on the dunes.

Why our mothers worry about us...

Seems Hank and I seem to seek adventure. They say, "there's a chance your car will roll." We say, "can you promise?" :) We were not in this car but it was quite a surreal experience to look beside you and see a car rolling down a dune!

So, we start adding it up - 120 people at $50 each is $6000 - - I'm no insurance adjuster but that appears to be more than $6,000 in damage. This doesn't seem like an impressive business plan to me!

My first henna

The Arabian Hank and Amanda Welch!

We could really get used to dressing this way - no worrying about what to wear, shopping is pretty simple, and what woman wouldn't what to wearing slimming black all the time?!?!