Desert Meet

Caroline is regular on the Abu Dhabi Women's Forum. One of the friends she has made there goes on regular 4x4 outings into the desert. Yesterday we joined them. We all met up at a service station just outside Abu Dhabi city on the way to Al Ain. I guess there was about 15 cars, 3 (including us) in saloon cars. We drove further towards Al Ain and then off into the farm areas in on a tarmac road into the desert. At a convenient spot we all stopped. The 4x4's let some air out of their tires and the saloons were left behind. We then made a short trip across the dunes to form a "base camp". There we set up out chairs/gazebos/BBQs etc.

Others had brought quad bikes, motocross bikes and remote control dune buggies.

Some of there experienced members offered to take out some first timers on a simple dune run. It was right about now that I really wished I still had mine! Instead I went out in a friend's Nissan Pathfinder with him driving. When an experienced driver is driving it looks all so easy, but for the newbies we had to stop every few minutes as another one got stuck - including my friend at one point!

After all the driving etc, some serious BBQing was in order as the sun set and the night turned black. We finished eating a drinking under the stars.

All in all a very enjoyable afternoon....