Safe and sound we arrived in Dubai airport at about 3am, a little travel-weary and a little excited. We boarded our bus (surprisingly to escape from the cold) and eventually headed towards the Emirates Marina Hotel. The trip ran into a hitch about 56 metres in though … literally. The bus driver sideswiped a taxi at about 5km/h as the cabby tried to add a third lane to an already narrow two-lane road. A lot of fierce hand waving, pointing and occasional stranger-slapping ensued, all of which seemed rather amusing to the boys. Although, by that stage, we were all so tired that someone coughing was funny. Once a police report was filed, the taxi scraped off the bus’s side with an oversized spatula (everything’s huge in Dubai) and the bus driver composed himself, we were on our way. (As a footnote, I was interested to see that the escalators in the airport had signs along the last two-thirds of the railing which read “Warning! End of escalator approaching.” As though you could forget in the 11 second ascent that there was an end to the ride and get so surprised much that you thought to yourself: ‘Somebody should really post warnings on those things. I had no idea it was about to end.’)

In the spirit of the escalator warnings, I’d like to add one here: this paragraph will be short and boring. We arrived at the hotel at about 6am and slept until about 11am. Some people had breakfast before they slept, some after. The hotel room was amazing, bigger than my house – I think I’m going to live here.

 

Upon waking, everyone geared up and followed conditioning guru Stephen Schwerdt to the beach for a quick jog and recovery session. Spirits were high after a bit of touch rugby and a dip in the Arabian Sea to cool the nerves and calm the muscles … or something to that effect. After recovery was lunch and the Orient 4WD Tour hosted by one of the Crows’ favourite sons/fathers: Rob Gerard.

 

The 4WD trip was a blast. We ‘paired into threes’ (footy lingo), filed into our cars and headed up the freeway towards the desert and was pleased to see, for thrill’s sake, that there was a minimum speed limit on the freeway. I was curious at the motive behind these signs as clearly most of the drivers in Dubai weren’t paying the maximum speed limit signs too much consideration. I was in a car with curly-haired scholar Greg “Shark” Gallman; pasty youngster Patrick “Rodney” Dangerfield; and driver Rasheed – who we jocularly dubbed ‘Roger.’

 

We reached our destination in the desert and saw a few things to whet the appetite for adventure: a roll cage in the car (which admittedly rendered the usual benefits of my height useless and uncomfortable), the tyres were being let down for extra suspension and Rasheed put his driving glasses on for “extra seeing” according to him. I asked conversationally whether his lenses were convex or concave and if he believed in the benefits of bi-focals, but it seemed to get a little lost in the translation as he replied “no.”

 

The trip started excellently and continued in that fashion for the duration. It’s too hard to describe in Arial typeface, but let’s just say there was sand dunes, speed, burnouts and a heck of a lot of fun. Part of the fun was provided by a few incidents along the way, like Steven ‘Triggy’ Trigg opening his window to say something to someone and copping a face full of sand and Kris ‘Mass’ Massie (how do they come up with these nicknames!?) trying to ride a camel bareback and finding himself straddling the ground with his face rather than the camel with his legs. The trip rose, fell, undulated and spun all to the great joy of the team – it did make it terribly hard to read my book though – and we reached our destination of a small village in the sand where we stayed for dinner.

 

At our dinner locale we saw a number of locals and local culture including some local food, tattooing, falconry, camel rides, dance and something I didn’t know was Arabic – beach volleyball! We tried to convince some of the younger guys that eating sand was a local custom and that the hosts would get offended if they didn’t do it. Unfortunately they were too switched on and refused to … so we just put sand in their food. The dancer we saw was grand and very involving. The highlight perhaps was coach Neil ‘Craigy’ Craig being pulled onto the stage to try his hand at belly dancing. He probably shouldn’t give up his day job.

 

I hope everything’s good back in Australia or wherever you’re reading this and seeing as my phone doesn’t work here, LJ can you please tape The Simpsons for me.

 

Cheers,

Gilly #1