I get up at 5am in the morning. Sleeping is comfortable, but sleeping from 8pm to 5am is more than enough. I fumble around the tent. I make tea and wait for the others to wake up (read: I make a little noise so they wake up first). Then I force everyone to eat because we are in a hurry to get to the hike .
The sun is already high. We start walking at 8am. At 11.30am, we finally cross Samar circular route (it is 6km long) we are hot for fuck off. There is a bit of shade every two kilometers along the path. Otherwise, it's a rocky desert with occasional oases and goats. A nice experience.
In the afternoon we return to Dubai because after such a long day , all we can dream of is a swimming pool. The way back goes smoothly, although driving on seven-lane highways, well, I didn't drive it, but it doesn't look like much fun.
In the morning we lie down and fall asleep. We have a long drive to the emirate of Abu Dhabi in the remote Liwa Desert . The anticipation is at its peak. The show is like this: orange shades, dunes, sand, tent, fire, sunset and sunrise. Vasko can drive up to 160km/h along the way. The road is empty. A few kilometers before our destination, the highest dune in the Emirates Moreeb Dune , we meet maybe 4 cars. When we get out of the car we almost have a stroke. It's so hot. Really so hot . So hot that we can barely crawl to the first shade. There, in the middle of nowhere, is a children's playground with green grass. Once a year, they organize a week-long festival by the dune, and of course, there is the appropriate infrastructure.
We drive closer to the dune, but soon after "Mom, it's burning me, it's burning me" we abandon the idea of climbing it. We get back in the car and go hunting for a camping spot. We find an abandoned road (20m away from the current new main road) and drive up and down, every now and then jumping out of the car to climb a dune to see what's on the other side. There, sometime after 3:30 p.m., we find a suitable spot. We actually sleep only about 200m away from the car. We carry our suitcase and tent.
The children are in a state of utter happiness. On the world's largest sandbox. They don't even know what to do. They would rather play with diggers, or they would rather run, roll around, throw sand, bury their feet... At one point, they start playing with dried camel poop. "Mom, we made a fence for the flowers."
We set up the tent and go for a walk in the desert. The sun is already a little lower. When we return and wait for the sunset, it starts to blow strongly. Our idea of baking in the desert is a bit different. sfiži . It's so windy that Vaskot and I find another location and move the tent into a more sheltered spot. We're hungry and even though the wind is blowing sand, Vasja lights a grill and we cook our skewers. They're great, but they also get covered in sand. They are gnawing at us . Still, nothing is left. We eat everything. We also bought some young corn, which luckily doesn't sting as much and is really delicious (we'll be grilling it at home now!). The wind is still holding on, so we jump into our sleeping bags and go to sleep. We fall asleep to the sounds of the tent canvas being moved by the wind.
At night I wake up again for a few hours and scrub my face and body, because the sand is everywhere . It even goes through the tent. Around midnight the wind dies down completely and I feel complete silence. Crazy. When we wake up in the morning we see how much sand has accumulated overnight. Everywhere, but it really is everywhere. But I have to add that this desert sand is not so annoying like the one on the coast. It doesn't stick. We wake up in the morning to a damp and cold morning. It's blowing again. I still manage to make tea and breakfast. We eat, the kids are going crazy again When Urban peeks out of the tent in the morning, he smiles so sincerely, and if I could read minds, I bet his thoughts at that moment were: “Wow, I woke up on a huge sandbox.” These are the moments that will stay in your memory forever.
We pick up and pack up all our belongings and trash and head to Abu Dhabi.
Only later, after the camping trip was over and a friend warned us, did I go read about the Empty Quarter and what a hostile environment it is. Google it too, if you're interested in deserts.