Ode to Oman

Well, I've been back in Dubai for two weeks after a blissfully relaxing month back home and in Brisbane. And my wonderful friends here had kindly invited me on a camping trip to the neighbouring country of Oman. So off we went for the weekend.

While us girls drove over the border and up the coast before taking the 4x4 up the mountains, the guys did it the hardway. They climbed the most dangerous cliff face I've seen, no ropes, no harnesses. Crikey!

Bottom left is the rock Stairway to Heaven with the guys climbing up it! (Not my photos Dad!) They went off course by two hours until a guide on the cliff (random) found them and directed them to the stairway.

We met the guys at the top with the camping gear, food, and in time for sunset pics up on the cliff. Absolutely breathtaking!

The guys very kindly asked the Arab farmer if we could camp on his land...noone else around for miles. We paid him in fruit :) Had a great campfire/bbq going and lay back to watch the stars. Amazing. Such a relaxing weekend...communing with nature.

Dan, me and Kathleen riding up to the peak the 2nd day.

To finish the weekend off, we stopped off at a shooting camp on the way home and learnt how to fire a pistol. Fun! Got to do a couple of rounds...watch out peoples...this girl's packing!

Where did the month go???

After much hounding from my sis Andi, I've finally gotten around to this next post. The month has flown by and it's Christmas!!!!! I've been a busy gal, hence my lack of blog attention.

Dec was kick-started with the Dubai 7s - and unless you've been living in a black hole somewhere, NZ WON!! Bout time we got something under our belt. It was a great couple of days, you wouldn't have thought you were in Dubai, that's for sure. I had some friends over from London for the weekend and of course the local kiwi gang. And the event was topped off by Zu2 - the best U2 cover band and they were darn good!!

The final score!!!

The next night we attended the Kiwi Ball, the event of the year. Black tie at the Grand Hyatt. Op Shop were flown over by Emirates (yay!!) to play for the evening, and we had a great feed and fab NZ wine :)

Now I have Kath and Noah here for Christmas and we've already started trekking around Dubai. They got to see Ski Dubai today - we'll go back for Noah to have a go soon. I'm not so keen after my last venture inside. I took part in an amazing race challenge put on by a media company - I was part of the "Fly Emirates" team. And one of our challenges was to don ski gear over our jeans and trek up the entire slope. We were not impressed and not in a hurry to go back!!

Christmas day is dinner for 10 at my villa - yay for Noah cooking the meat! Going to be a fun day, followed by a NY Party at mine too. It's a good location so might as well use it.

Will update again once we've survived all the festivities. Merry Christmas!!!

Done :)

One down...two to go...

Sausages and salad :)

Those of you who know me well will wonder how on earth 'sausages' managed to make it into a heading of mine. Well, we cranked up the bbq for the first time this weekend - and you know it's not a barbie without the meat in a tube fav (I generously let everyone else enjoy them).

What a jam packed weekend. Joined my fellow kiwis here for dinner Thurs night - tame photos are attached. Most are very strange facial expressions that I should probably seek permission on before publishing!!

Me, Phil (Invercargill), Trudy (West Coast)

Phil (one of the more normal shots), Dan (Wgnt yay!!) and me

Friday night was girls night and we hit the dance floor. After some serious booty shaking (I just can't help myself) I clambered into a cab and just about fell into bed.

Natalie and I at The Lodge

Then Sat rolled around and we were incredible blessed with finding an outdoor furniture set and bbq for 650 dhs ($300). Had a nice relaxing time to celebrate my birthday, reminescent of neighbourhood brunch at 198 Tinakori (minus Mike's FANTASTIC pancakes). The pois came out, the guys tried to master them (it was actually surprisingly impressive) and we decided many more bbq's are required at our villa :)

Oh what the heck, for those of you who bothered to scroll down this far, enjoy (sorry guys, I'll owe you another meal!)

Me and JT

I've had my first moment of fame here (if you can call it that!). Went to the invite only fashion show for Alexander McQueen's fall line. And made it into the Gulf News Tabloid section! The proof is below - featuring none other than JT on the cover (look at the first small pic).

It was an interesting night watching the ladies hob nob with their friends (think multitudes of air kissing "mwah, mwah"). Could have done with a champagne instead of the fruit drink but that's Dubai for ya!

Stage two of my first painting is now complete. This whole series is going to take a while - must get more motivated! One more area to go and this one's done!

It's been a tough week here. Work is so full on that I don't have any thinking time. None. I'd like to have one issue free day next week just to help make it through.

On the up side, I've met some more Kiwi's which is awesome. Bring on the increasing-in-size Christmas dinner I say.

Jealous of the Jandal

Oh how I love the fact that Kiwi's and jandals go hand in hand. Had Chris Harford visiting for a day and we ventured off for a desert safari. With both of us in our trusty jandals, the other tourists must have been green with envy as we stomped our way through sand dunes, sand going in, sand going out. No worries about walking tentatively to avoid sand in the sneaker.

And no-one else was running and jumping down the sand dunes, trying (unsuccessfuly mostly for me) to get as much air as possible. I landed just about up to my knees. Desert sand is hot!

The 4-wheel driving was great - sand as far as the eye could see, and we visited a camel farm to have a nosey. I don't know why but they kept running away from me. Like I'm that scary (no rude comments thanks). When we got to our camp, we went for a camel ride where I almost went over the camel's head on dismount. It is a weird thing, I leaned back like they said but that camel had different ideas - it was payback for my reckless abandonment "no-hands" approach!

With a long weekend to celebrate the end of Ramadan, I headed to Fujairah, on the coast, to join friends at the beach for the day. The water was gorgeously warm! We hired a boat in the afternoon and about ten of us went out to 12m deep. Saw some dolphins which made me feel safer about there being no sharks! We had a blast - diving off the back of the boat. It's amazing how you take NZ life at the beach for granted. The Arab friends with us had never swam in deep seas before.

A feast for the eyes...and the stomach!

Can I just say WOW!! Went to Bab Al Sham's hotel for dinner last Thursday - it's out in the desert and was incredible. We got there just in time to watch the sun set over the sand dunes (sigh). Then we had an incredible meal, with great entertainment. I took far too many photo's so this blog is dedicated to my snap happy night :)

The equivalent of Friday night drinks :)

Enrique Iglesias with a Middle Eastern accent

On Friday Monica's flatmate had an International theme party to celebrate her birthday. So Christine and I did what we could to represent. And I made everyone watch the haka on my ipod. Then we lost the rugby the following night. Not talking about it.