Doha Diarires: Part 5

I have finally edited the photos I wanted to put on this post, so here we go: part five of the saga continues. I put a vintage/seventies tint on most of these photos. I thought it would make it look more desert-like, which it definitely was. After the night at the lovely hotel, we ate breakfast at Johnny Rockets, went home, repacked the car, and followed two other families to go to the inland beach. We had many adventures before we even got to the beach, which is what all these pictures will be dedicated to on this post.

This billboard says, "Seatbelt is safety". With a guy wearing his thobes and another cheesy slogan, it was a must photo opportunity.

After driving about an hour or so, we got to the point where we quit driving on cement and start driving on the sand. We had a nice touristy pit stop so that Ashley and I got to ride the camels. Why it never occurred to me that we would me taking a TON of photos on this day I don't know. I might have worn a different swim suit cover-up. Maybe one that didn't make me look so white and was a bit longer. Hey, I just thought we were going to be riding in the car.

I actually put some shorts on under the cover-up, but while on the camel they don't seem to show up. I had a very scratchy blanket under my saddle, which was rubbing on my legs during the ride. Once again, reason to have worn something different. Changing from the laying on the ground to the standing up position with the camel (and vice versa) was nerve racking for a girl who has never felt comfortable on a horse.

When we took off, Barrett started crying for Aunt Sissy (Ashley), so he and Wendi jumped on a camel to catch up with us.

All four of us on our camels. It was very hot and very sunny during our brief camel trek. They seemed like such sweet creatures, and I actually felt sorry for them that they just sat around all day waiting for the next white girl to come and ride them.

I understood the reasoning, but it seemed cruel for their mouths to have this suffocating crochet thing on them. Here's two camels playing with each other. It's actually amazing that people used to (and probably still do) travel across a desert on these creatures.

Ashley, me, & Wendi

Nick had been saying how he wanted to see a falcon that day. Well, low and behold, you could pay 10QR just to hold one. So I did - for my mom, who is such the bird lover. Since this is a hunting bird, they had its eyes covered up so it wouldn't hurt me. I really liked the stylish glove that they gave me.

Once again, wish I had on a different outfit. But hey, my summer tan is coming. I think that bird really liked me. When I handed the falcon off, it tried to fly away from the next person. Shani, the bird whisperer.

Here's Nick letting air out of the tires before we go sand bashing. Didn't know that was a requirement. Nick drove an FJ, which everytime we would pass one of these cars, Barrett would yell out the color of the car with the FJ. So if we saw a blue one, he would yell out, "Blue FJ!"

One of Nick's coworkers knew how to properly sand bash. So we took at picture at the tallest dune that we were able to drive down. It looked daunting (and I wanted to really scream when we casually went down the dune).

Hard to see the drop off, but I was at the top taking a panoramic view.

Donna's family going down the dune. Brooks was riding with them, so we were screaming for him.

Once again, hard to tell, but this is as we are starting to go completely vertical down the dune.

So glad we didn't do the professional sand bashing - don't know if we could have handled it. Nick was loving every minute of it. On to the beach for the next post....