Reda and her friend Ilona had pre-arranged a couple of tours for me and Ilona’s visiting cousins. We started the morning at the Disney-fontified Dubai Miracle Gardens, a flower and garden expo wonderland that is perhaps most impressive for surviving in the desert climes.
It’s like a year-round Rose Bowl Parade Float exhibit. Each year there’s a signature piece and this year’s was an Emirates A380 airplane redone in flowers. You’ll see a number of shots of it as I couldn’t stop snapping photos of the thing.
From there we ambled around the concentric circles to Gate 2 and the separate admission for the Dubai Butterfly Garden. As butterfly enclosures go, it was sufficiently hot and humid inside to provide the right atmosphere for our winged friends. Per usual, I was most fascinated by signage and communications regarding the butterfly. How often does one see a portrait of an Emir done with pieces of deceased butterflies? Here you see all seven of them, each one outlined in body parts. I really regret not getting the Emir rocking the sunglasses in his official butterfly portrait. But in any case, here’s a sample:
***PHOTO FORTHCOMING — I’m having all sorts of import issues with my iPhone. Something’s corrupted or not quite right… I have to consult the Apple User Manual… or, as it’s known to others, “Google.”***
Update – 1/22/17: 2:03 AM
I didn’t do anything differently but was finally able to upload these pics:
I also loved this sign, which I feel like should be emblazoned on a inspirational magnet and handed out to all citizens of the word. They feel like words to live by:
After a rushed lunch we split up as Reda and Ilona had tickets to see CATS tonight and we were booked for a desert road trip. A cascading drive over and around sand dunes made for a hair-raising and fun adrenaline rush. Our driver, Suk, must have been the Team Leader. He’d been driving tourists around the dunes for 10 years and must have been the most experienced one out there. Two separate vehicles got stuck — one with a tire blow out and the other just literally stuck in the sand. In both instances, Suk was called in to troubleshoot and resolve the issues. We wound up getting some good photos of the dunes at sunset as a result but were late to dinner at Skyland Ranch… which was kind of a bummer in one respect: I missed the chance to ride a camel. But then again, I rode a camel in Australia so I can’t complain TOO much…
The dinner was akin to a Hawaiian Luau in that it offered a series of events and activities prior to a couple of stage shows involving a less-than-seven-but-maybe-I-lost-count veil dance, a belly dancer who also belly danced with swords followed by a buffet dinner, and culminating with a final fire twirling demonstration set to pop music. So, ya know, a very traditional night out in the Dubai Desert I suppose.
But I did get to don traditional Arab Dress for a quick photo. Three guys who were on our tour bought theirs earlier in the tour… when I asked how much they paid for their souvenir taub and keffiyeh combo cost, they looked really sheepish and said 85 US dollars… apiece. But they got some great photos. Sometimes you get something in your head and cost be damned. Because they DID get some great photos, especially on the dunes.
I however paid zero extra dollars and got this photograph gratis. So sometimes you get something for nothing… or at least as included in the exorbitant price of something else entirely, and hustlers be darned!
The road home was a series of miscommunications over where to drop people off. I opted to just get dropped off at the first stop and take a cab back to my hotel — it wound up being another 40 dirham or roughly $11. To not have to try and sort out language barriers and whisper down the lane telephone style shenanigans from the back seat to the front was worth the $11. It wasn’t a bad situation I just didn’t have the energy to try and help and I’m not sure I could be much help in directions here in the United Arab Emirates anyway… hell, I’m not very good at directions in places I’ve called home! I have an innate sense of misdirection but that’s a skill hardly considered marketable or useful. I suppose I could design something entitled, “A Map For Getting Lost… A Thoreau-ian Atlas.” It would just give wrong directions everywhere.
Tomorrow I’m off to Abu Dhabi on a day long adventure. It’s the capital of the UAE and Reda tells me is much more traditional than the financial, business centers and tourism magnet that is Dubai. As I was in the cab, Reda told me they moved the timetable up and so I’m to meet folks at the Four Seasons Jumeriah at 8:15 AM.