'round the world

Dubai Update

It's been a while since the last weblog, so here's what has been going on:

Yesterday we went to the Dubai World Cup, the richest horse race in the world. What an experience! It's pretty hard to describe, but think of a rodeo, add glamour and a lot of money, subtract cowboy boots and switch hats from men to women. That about does it. Everyone is dressed up, men mostly in suits and women in dresses, many of them in hats and some of the women in hats that are too hard to explain. Think of Mr. Dressup's Tinkle Trunk, subtract the puppets, add a few hundred dollars of "flash". Yeah, that's the ticket. Anyways, I got some good pictures of horses running by the fence, a few of the people and some of the grounds. The entire event last night had a total of $16 million US as prize money for the horses, with the final race having a $6 million US price tag. Easily the richest horse race ever run. The horse that did win had about a 2 or 3 length lead with 400m to go (where I was standing), and ended up winning by about 5 lengths or so. Amazing time.

Prior to yesterday's excitement, we went camping on the weekend (which for the Arabs is Thursday and Friday) to the mountains in Oman. The weekend before we had been rained on and sandstormed out, we were hoping for better but it didn't get off to a good start. On the trip out sand was blowing fiercely across the highway like snow in a blizzard on the prairies. It rained intermittently and we had thoughts of turning around. We entered the mountains in rain and were surprised by the amount of Arabs in cars heading out on the gravel road. We followed and were surprised by what we saw: a waterfall! I guess only a few times a year it rains heavily enough in the mountains to produce waterfalls, but this wasn't just any waterfall, it was huge (more in height than in width). The locals in their white robes were climbing it and others had gathered around to watch it. Quite the spectacle. And we continued on. Further down the road, after the rain had stopped, we saw places where similar waterfalls had been earlier in the day, but by now they had dried up... we must have been lucky to see the one we did. Through the mountains we continued, up and up.

On our way up the mountain, near the summit, we met Sayeed, the Afghani goat herder. Actually, more or less I met him, Richard already knew him and gave him some food. Kacey and Nadine stayed in the cars as to not upset the delicate Muslim balance of hiding women from other men. It worked, although I was wearing shorts and Sayeed looked at my knees rather oddly. Down the mountain we went and eventually set up camp. It stopped raining, we had a good dinner and Richard's friend from work, met us out there for the evening. It was gusty throughout the evening, but the skies were clear and the temperature stayed at about 20 C.

In the morning we headed out and went through a canyon with huge vertical rock walls. Another equation to describe the area: Take one part Rocky Mountains with one part Grand Canyon and mix well, take away all vegetation and subtract any water (flowing or still), add in sporadic thin trees and a few rain water puddles, subtract all wildlife and replace with goats. That's about it. But, it's not as dull as you may imagine, the mountains were huge and the valleys were amazing... it was more a moonscape or a scene from Mars than anything from back home.

We continued on, drove for a while and got, eventually, to the Indian Ocean where we settled into a resort-like motel for the day and snorkelled for a good part of the day. Lots of people and, surprisingly, lots of fish, some of which we didn't see in any other place thus far. Kacey saw a reef shark speed by while I was looking down. It was only about a meter long, but when they go by so close and so fast they look bigger. I assume she heard the "Jaws" theme the rest of the day. We had lunch, went home, arrived at about 6 or 7pm and we were sleeping by 9:30pm.

Posted by graham at March 30, 2003 01:42 AM