Desert Safari

Thursday I was lucky enough to have a free day which enabled me to sign up for a desert safari. A desert safari entails riding a 4X4 over sand dunes in a desert and it all ends at a base camp where you can go camel riding, ride a quad bike over the dunes, go sand boarding, and have an Arabian BBQ.

As you’re riding over the dunes and the jeeps start sliding sideways down the dunes you realize it wouldn’t take much for one of the jeeps to roll over. That is all part of the excitement, however in the back of your mind you think well what are the chances of a jeep rolling over, these drivers do this all the time. As you can see from the photo, one of the jeeps in our caravan did actually roll over. It was a very surreal experience. As you go over the dunes the jeeps all stop and wait for everybody to catch up and watch the other jeeps come over. We had stopped and I looked in front of the jeep and there was a bumper of a car. I started to say something about the remains of a vehicle that didn’t make it and all of a sudden I heard the driver gasp. Looking to the left we see that one of the jeeps had rolled onto its side. All the drivers jumped out of their jeeps and ran over to investigate and help out, slowly all the men in the group headed over to try and roll the jeep back over. Luckily everybody in the jeep was safe and the first thing was to get them all out safely. Once they were all out the group was able to get the jeep righted, at this time you could see that the front wheel had come off the rim and the hypothesis is that this is what caused the jeep to roll.

While the crew then worked to change the flat I took advantage of this opportunity to grab some pictures of the locals that had appeared on their quad bikes. I walked up to the top of one of the dunes that the bikers were riding over. One of the guys stopped to talk for a little while; he had been giving some members of the groups rides on this bike and chatting with everybody. He offered to take a picture of me on the bike so I hopped on. When he asked me if I wanted a ride at first I said no, but then he said he would just take me to the bottom of the dune and then I could get off. I figured why not, but when we got to the bottom he looked at me and asked if I wanted to continue, the adrenaline was flowing so I said sure. A quick spin around the dunes and he dropped me back with the group and gave somebody else a spin. The guys that were in the jeep with me came up and said how surprised they were that I had gotten on the bike. It was definitely a thrilling experience.

After the tire on the jeep was fixed, we got back in and continued to base camp. I was a little leery after seeing the accident but we made it safely back with no further incidents. As I was in an adventurous mood after riding the quad bikes when my new friends asked if I wanted to join them for a smoke I agreed. I only took 2 little puffs, but I guess I can no longer say I’ve never smoked.