Quest for Natural AirConditioning

A month a go we took Lawrence on a road trip to Al Ain and Jebel Hafeet.

Let’s back up- in Dubai “petrol” (gasoline) is $1.60 per gallon and cars are very cheap. So a couple of months back we bought an old 1999 Land Rover. We plan to take this old beast whom we have named, Lawrence of Arabia (a.k.a. don Lorenzo), out for camping trips in the desert.
With temperatures around 115F it is a little too hot to go camping. Instead we drove an hour and half through the desert to a city in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi called Al Ain.

Al Ain is a beautiful oasis city with lush gardens, historical sites and a mall with an ice skating rink. There are more local Emiratis in Al Ain than in Dubai. Below is a photo of some local kids ice scating for the first time. The bars prevent them from falling down. We stopped by a museum where we had dates and "gowa" (Emirati style coffee) with a local Emirati archeologist and falconer. He told us about how to hunt with hawks and falcons.

Nearby at the foot of Jebel Hafeet (Hafeet means "mountain" in Arabic), we enjoyed sitting in some green grass.

Later we drove up to the top of Jebel Hafeet. The air was cool and fresh. This was exactly what we had been searching for to escape the heat. Below is a photo of Jamie at the top.