Desert Safari

I finally got to see some desert today. The first event was dune bashing, a.k.a. letting basically all the air out of your tires so you at least have SOME traction on the sand and racing up and down huge dunes in a 4WD. It's quite popular here and the dunes are all covered in tire tracks to spoil all my photos. It feels like being in those cheesy car commercials where they drive big SUVs around on exotic terrain to show how rugged and manly you'll feel if you buy it. You feel less manly when the car breaks down though. I also got some quick camel riding in. They're a lot larger than I thought they were, and hanging on while they stand up and sit down can be tricky. They're very cool animals though and they're a lot less unwieldy than the elephants. None of them had wood which was disappointing. I guess I'm just more arousing to elephants than to camels. Then it was time for dinner and the belly dancer. She was pretty good and actually managed to pressure some audience members into participating (I think the bar was a factor in this). There were lots of white, pudgy bellies (including mine) wobbling about in a very unsexy fashion. A few Swiss-German backpacker girls went up as a group and were actually able to shake up something tasty, especially when props were incorporated, but other than that the crowd was pretty pathetic, as is to be expected. Strange that a culture so protective of its women would allow a dance this blatantly sexual to be performed.