Desert fun

2^nd morning in Dubai, feeling fresh and ready for a new day. Today I wanted to visit the Burj Dubai tower, the tallest building in the world. Obviously if you are in Dubai it's a sight you have to visit, unless you are scared of heights like my dad. So we didn't have breakfast because of Ramadan it was easier to wake up a bit later, go spend some time at the pool and have a heavy lunch at the hotel (they served food during Ramadan) before heading out to the city. At the hotel they recommended us to take a taxi instead of the metro since taxis's are really cheap in Dubai. The trip cost us only 5€ which is really really cheap on a Finnish standard.

So we arrived at the Dubai mall and had a bit of a walk around. While I was gonna go to the tower, my dad chose to stay firmly on the ground and visit the Dubai aquarium. The aquarium is a mighty sight, a huge tank filled with water and fish located right in the middle of the mall. So I sett off to find the entrance to the tower while my dad stayed at the aquarium for a tour. It was not really an easy job finding one relatively small entrance in the world's biggest mall but I managed to find it on time. So up we go! First of course there was a security check like in every major tourist attraction nowadays, and an annoyingly long hallway full of exhibits about the tower and how it was built. It was very obvious how very proud they are about it, I was rather annoyed by it (very propaganda-ish) and wanted just to go up. Well I got to the elevator and up we went. Like really fast, it took just a minute to get up to the 124^th floor.  To be honest, the views weren't maybe the best I've seen, mainly because of the badly polluted air. You couldn't see the sea or anything, just some skyscrapers and sand. A lot of sand. Still pretty cool being high up over Dubai on the tallest building in the world. There was also an option to go around 20 floors higher but it costed like 100€?! Way too much for a ticket, since the basic was already around 40€. Luckily I was traveling with my dad haha. 

After around 45 minutes I decided to head back down and meet up with my dad. It took me like 20 minutes to get back to the aquarium because of the ridiculously big mall. I met up with my dad and we headed back to the hotel by taxi. At the hotel I looked up online for some quadbike safaris in the desert. We ended up booking a nice one I found, it included quadbiking and some dune bashing in a Land Cruiser. So we chilled out at the hotel some time waiting for Ramadan to end so we could go get some food. The time finally came and we went on the hunt for food like a pair of hungry lions. We bumped into this Lebanese buffet that served buffet (there are a lot of special buffets around the city during the Holy month) and had a really tasty meal! They served pretty much all kinds of Lebanese food and there even was a whole barbecued lamb which was incredibly tender. We stuffed ourselves so bad the 500 m walk back to the hotel felt like a marathon. We went to bed pretty soon since tomorrow was gonna be a big day in the desert!

Today was gonna be the most active day so far. We booked a desert safari trip including dune bashing (you go fast in the desert with a 4x4), quadbiking and sandboarding. The day started a bit earlier than the others, we had a pick-up from the hotel at 9 o'clock taking us outside of town to the desert. It was like half an hour drive to the outskirts of town where the view turned into desert only. Soon the car took off from the main road onto a sandy little track. This is where the fun started. Our driver started to hit the gas and the car was bouncing and jumping on the sand dunes. It was hard to stay in our seats even with the seat belt on, but awesome fun!! Some 20 minutes later we arrived at this small camp in the middle of nowhere and stepped out of the car. My god it was hot! The temperature was around 45°C and the sand reflected the heat like crazy. There were a few quadbikes lined up ready to hit the dunes. Due to the summer and the day trip we choose (nobody goes to the desert in such weather conditions) there was nobody else than us which suited me rather fine. We hopped on the machines and took off into the dunes. There was the guides Land Cruiser in front of us guiding (luckily since we would have been lost in the desert in no time) and driving us around some cool spots. At one point we arrived at this big wall, like a few kilometers long at least which apparently was the palace for the King of Dubai. The other side we saw ages ago driving by the tarmac road so this place was immensely huge. Well back to the main thing: quads, we took off again into the dunes and had a blast going fast, racing and jumping over huge walls of sand. The time literally flew past driving through and we had to return back to base and give up the quads.

Next up it was time to test the sandboard. It was basically a normal snowboard, worn to scratches from all the sand. I had to walk up to this small hill from where I went down. It was rather easy (I've skied a lot but never snowboarded) and it didn't go too fast. But awesome! I went up once again but gave up after it because the heat was just killing me and the sand burning through my shoes. At least I tried it and maybe next time I'll try snowboarding instead of skiing! It was time to head back to the city and we were kinda happy to get out of the desert heat. On the way we stopped to fill up the tires (you have to empty them a bit if you go driving on sand) and obviously it was also a touristic stop to make some money. I didn't buy anything and my dad just bought a pack of cigs and a lighter he didn't even need but they tried to sell it with effort. I guess nobody else tends to stop there (it's located in the middle of nowhere) so even selling a lighter to make an extra dollar is a deal for them. We took off from the shop and headed back to another world with all the glam and hustle in Dubai city.

In the background you can see the camp and quads.

Arriving at the hotel we were really tired from all the heat and decided to take a small nap. It really hits you hard when you're not used to the heat. So we took a little break and were all fresh again after it, ready to eat some lunch and hit the swimming pool. The best thing you can do on a hot day! We went to the hotel restaurant (surprise) to eat some lunch. I took some noodles with chicken and my dad had a burger. Pretty boring compared to what Dubai has to offer but it was still Ramadan so no choice really. For dinner we were gonna find something nice then. After lunch it was time to head to the roof and take a dive in the cool water. What a refreshing feeling! On the roof they also served drinks which was a huge plus, but you had to drink them behind a secluded area. Kinda weird they serve but you have to hide it? Well nonetheless it was a good thing to get some cold drinks in the heat. The views were also really nice from the roof, you could see the skyline from the Burj Dubai area. We got enough from the swimming and the sun was also slowly starting to set which meant we could soon get some food! Time to shower up and hunt for a place to eat. I just checked on Google maps for fun what is around the hotel and found this meat orientated place and as sworn carnivores decided to check out the place. It ended up being a heaven of meat! It was a buffet with 17, yes SEVENTEEN different kinds of meat dishes! We just jumped in and went totally crazy, I even tried every single one of those and yes, each one was really really good. Some people looked at us a bit funny since we were the only western people at the place, apparently it was popular among the local Pakistani and Indian population. I mean it's a good thing, usually the less tourists you see at a restaurant the better and cheaper it is. The rule was accurate here aswel. It was hard to walk the 500 meters back to the hotel after stuffing ourselves with all that meat, but we made it though. We were both really tired and just crashed into bed and went to sleep.

View from the hotel roof terrace. In the background the Burj Dubai tower.