Today is only a half day as the ship sails at 1pm. As we have spent yesterday in the city and walking around, it was time for a change in pace. We're off on a 4WD desert safari.

After our late night last night, the tour start time of 7:30am did not seem fair, but as we were both excited to go, dragging ourselves out of bed before 7am wasn’t as bad as first thought .

We were in a 4WD with an older couple who opted to leave the back seat for us. While the seats were anything but comfortable, we shouldn’t complain as the other 4WD had six people in them. It was hard enough to get comfortable with just us, let alone another 2 people.

In our 4WD convoy, we headed to the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve. Established by the ruler of Dubai in the 1990’s in response to the disappearance of the countries wildlife, particularly the Arabian Oryx (a type of antelope), it was created as a place where animals could roam safely.

On the drive to the reserve, we had a short stop at a camel farm. Photos were taken and no one got spat at. The camels were nice, one came over and placed its backside near the fence (people moved away just in case there was going to be a surprise) and another came wandering over to us to say hi. We weren’t sure what it was wanting so we kept a respectable distance and had a nice chat to it.

While we were whispering to camels, the drivers were deflating our tyres in preparation for the drive through the sand dunes at the nature reserve.

We bumped our way through the reserve and even saw what I can only assume was a herd of Arabian Oryx. After a short stop in the middle of nowhere to allow us to take desert related photos (and in the case of one fellow, back flip down a dune) we proceeded to our refreshment stop at a traditional camp .

At the refreshment stop, some people opted to go on a camel ride. I wasn’t interested and neither was Mum so we went into the camp and had some Arabian coffee with a date. They also gave us an early lunch (as it was only 10:15am we shared the lunch). After about 15 minutes the camel riders came back looking a little on the hot and bothered side – we were later informed that the temperature was around 45 degrees.

The ride back to town was cooling and traffic wasn’t too bad. We got back to the dock about 20 minutes before it was 'all aboard time’, so we used a couple of our Dirham’s to buy a small souvenir. Then it was time to be herded back on board (as a group we aren’t that good at making sure we’re all aboard on time).

Instead of a nice Arabian sunset for sail away, we said goodbye to the Dubai skyline under a blaring desert sun. As is becoming our ritual, we headed up to the bar on deck 15 for our farewell drink and waved the UAE goodbye.

Fun fact:
The 2009 Oscar winner for best movie was Slumdog Millionaire.