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.