Desert Fun

Shower never felt so good as this one and the water was relatively "cold".. my principles of happiness: appreciate small things and never expect too much - so you won't get dissapointed (and of course never trust man - but thats another chapter, i could write a whole book about that..)

So today was probably the most funny and exciting day since i'm here (i know i say it every Friday, but this one was really fun)

Started quite early, 8:30am our American friend "M" came to pick us up - we had some problem getting up, we are not used to so early appointments) so finally when everybody was in the car we drove to the beach where "M" booked the jetskies. Once i tried it very long ago in Croatia, but this time i really got the hang of it and enjoyed so much i could stay there for all day. We got a little safety briefing and some funny equipments: cheap sunglasses (looked funny on us), giant size lifejackets, baseball caps (we were instructed to turn it around so the wind won't sweep it off - haha i still lost mine :) so when we were finally ready to ride the waves looked quite funny.
By the way as "M" is a very well ogranized person he prepared and planned everything in advance. He had a water-proof map of our jetski trip, water-proof camera bag and all the necessary equipments we might need.
At the first couple of turns i almost droped "A" - my passinger - into the water.. but than i learnt how to maneuver. When you see the huge sea and nothing else in front of you want to speed up and the more speed you add the more you enjoy it. Btw i love speed! I think this is going to be my next addiction
So we went to a deserted island (artificial) to take some photos than headed to the harbour and along the coasts of Doha (awesome landscape). There were some ocean-going boats further from the coast and fishing-boats lied at anchor we went there to have a closer look of them. It was very cool. And we met some arabic idiots showing off to us circleing around us and finally hit our jetski - surprising but we didn't fell into the water. Our adrenalin level went up a little bit but it was fun :)

So after jetskiing we went to "M"s apartment to collect the stuff we need for our desert trip. As i mentined he was very well prepared, he got a huge cooling-box packed with chocolate, crips, chicken from KFC, water, diet coke.. and cinnabons (cinamon rolls - he said we don't have to eat all of it right now, we can have it later as well, but we eat all of it straight away haha - it was so divine we couldn't stop eating it - on attached picture on the right) provision would have been enough for a week - in case we got lost in the desert haha :) But as he was prepared - we had gps as well.
He lives in the new part of town on the 19th floor of a skyscraper with an amazing view, swimming pool on 22nd floor.. quite impressive. And he had 5 bathrooms so we didnt have to wait for each other to have a shower - ahh and he has cold tap water!
So afther the refreshment we started our desert trip. In Qatar there is not too much choise of roads or ways - one road to the north and another to the west and thats all and desert everywhere. Doha belongs to the desert as well, we have seen pictures 40 years back.. sand-dunes all over and nothing else, no flora or fauna, they just built these huge buildings here and planted palms trees and grass - i am always wondering how can they survive here)
So when we left the city we headed towards the north-west coast, the view was quite monotonous - white and yellow sand-dunes everywhere and the long road in front of us heading to the middle of nowhere and no cars on the road at all. Nothing behind us, nothing in front of us. I always wanted to see the desert. Desert - sounds a bit scary to me - desolate, no water, extreme temperatures, huge and everywhere you look you see the same thing. But this one is not that frightening, you can cross the whole country in one hour driving.
The next adventure happened when we saw a group of wild camels around a moor so we left the road and drove there to see them closer. When we wanted to cross the moor with the jeep - which looked small - we got bogged down in the mud. The more "M" stepped on the gas pedal the more we were sinking. "A" got scared but in a situation like this i can't do anything else but laughing. My only concern was the heat. When we climed out of the car got totally muddy. "M" was taking actions immediately, he saw a car somewhere bit further and went to get some help. Meanwhile we saw another car on the road and started shouting and jumping to drow attention. Some non-english speaker bedouins drove to us, the guys looked a bit weird to us, they don't see white woman often i guess. By that time "M" arrived with the other car we saw somewhere further, with an Irish guy. (Was nice to hear Irish accent again.)
So the 3 bedouin man pulled out the car without hasitating in a second - i was impressed, i thought we gonna spend the whole day there. So we thanked everybodys help when.. guess what happened? The bedouins crashed into the Irish guy's car.. well, that was a moment when everybody got speechless. The Irish guy didn't know what to say and the bedouins didn't speak english and i don't think thay had any insurance.. it was such an absurd situation that i needed to get back to the car and just laugh.. we left them standing in front of each other, the Irish guy waiting for some explanation or solution.. maybe they are still standing there..

So after seeing the camels from very close:) completely muddy and sweaty we continued our trip towards a castle - the scene of arabic movie shootings. We went offroad, only the gps guided us - smart invention.
It was a small castle with couple of palm trees, we looked around shooted some photos, it was too hot to stay too long and continued towards the to beach.
Completely deserted and desolate area around us.


And than suddenly we glimpsed the sea - we jumped in it immediately hoping for some refreshing.. but the sea water was boiling hot - 35 celsius we measured it - air 43 celsius. "M" brought a bag of ice into the water - we were cooling ourselves in the water with ice cubes haha
We set up a little tent to provide us shade and had a little picnic - we had the chikcen from KFC -, it reminded me to those movie scenes when some ppl got ship-wrecked and washed up to an uninhabited island. I always wanted to go to beaches where no one else is there just only us. Here it was. Walking on bare-feet to the water was quite painful - i thought its full of little stones but there were all shells everywhere, we collected millions of them.


(My bathroom is full of shells now.. doesn't smell too nice)

Finally when everyone got tired we packed our stuff and headed back to "civilization".
On the way lookin for the road we met camels everywhere walking around our car, they seemed quite friendly.
On attached pic top left another life-threatening situation haha (don't mess around with camels!)

And we arrived back without any more excitement in one piece.

Now i need some aloe vera on to my nose.. oops i got burnt a little bit..