The 'Woods: Where’s my rattle?

Mai Tai’s, Freedom Day Celebrations and some X Fighter action...

Spoilt for choose as always, the plans to head for dinner on a ‘Friday’ night turned into an epic search for the perfect place to go. One thing about Dubai, there is always a deal of sort happening here, there and everywhere...making the decision of where to go quite difficult. And not quite satisfied enough with the already million and one deals, we took advantage of Carol’s Emirates face card...it’s a wonderful thing...50% off all food and drinks at Mai Tai in the Dubai Marina, what more could you ask for?

Apparently...just a taxi to get you there! We have come to realise that trying to get anywhere on Thursday night for a specific time, or just in general really, is just crazy thinking! Come Thursdays the taxi system here does not work...they don’t ask where you going when you phone to book, meaning they actually have no queuing system, so they can’t plan their pre-booked journeys...i.e. if they knew they were dropping someone to The Lakes, they could plan or estimate an arrival time for someone else’s pick up at The Lakes...or so you would think. But no, it’s far more fun to make people wait and wait and wait...so after over 1.5hours of yes you guessed it...waiting... for the taxi we pre-booked, we decided to head off on foot towards The Lakes Club, in the hopes that we could snag a taxi, in the way I mentioned before.

After a bit more waiting at the main roundabout near The Lakes Club, looking a bit too much like 2 hookers with their pimp...heehee (just to clarify... the standing on the street corner part of being a hooker... as opposed to being dressed like hookers) or more appropriately for for this country, a man with his 2 wives... our cunning plan finally paid off and we were finally on our way for an evening of cocktails, food and good company.

The Marina at night is just a buzzing hub! Even after our dinner and cocktails and ‘little’ walk... when we landed up doing almost a complete loop by foot of the Marina (because someone who thought they knew where they were going, aka me, clearly didn’t) in search of a shisha place (good news though we now know the landmarks to look out for, should we ever get lost along the Marina Walk again! ☺) anyway by the time we found a shisha cafe it was quite late and heading for the early hours of the morning, and yet the Marina Walk was still buzzing. The strangest thing though, is that it’s not the usual culprits you would find on a late night out anywhere else in the world, i.e.the ‘youngsters’ out for a night on the town...isntead it’s families with their kiddies of all ages, who are still out and about. Mark and I struggled to keep up with the sprightly Carol, who fitted in quite easily with the local’s unusual family night time outings, thanks to her own unusual sleeping pattern, as an Air Hostess.

Friday morning arrived and Mark was up and at it early...heading to the gym, whilst Carol and I had a lazy lie in before heading to sun ourselves at the pool. And boy oh boy was it hot! Yes summer is definitely coming...the temperatures have already started to soar! From the pool we tried our hand at booking yet another taxi, this time to take us to the South Africa’s Freedom Day Celebrations (yes, in Dubai)...sounds like they do it every year, so we decided to go along and check it out...and since Carol is practically South African she came along too! This time making the taxi wait for us (being a Friday and during the day, they were back on track and even a little bit early). So off we headed to the Jebel Ali Shooting Club (note to self to make another trip there soon, to try our hand at target practice!), where the event was being held. After about a 20 - 30min trip out into the dessert we finally found the spot, which was literally in the middle of nowhere. Stepping inside the grounds, we were hit with a sea of SA accents, the most we have heard in one place, at one time, for quite awhile. We were given competition forms to fill out (to win a car)... much excitement... so without me even realising it, Percy Montgomery (and a few other rugby legends) just walked right on by (part of the day included a Legend’s rugby match by some of the Springbok legends, against the Lion’s legends).

There were a few stalls set up, including a dive shop stall (which Mark of course stopped at straight away), it had some good specials on, but since we had just arrived and not wanting to get too carried away, we settled on buying 2x underwater rattles (to aid our communication on our next diving trip). There were a few other stalls, which included some jewellery, paintings and an SA rugby jersey shop (I finally am the proud owner of 1x times SA rugby jersey).

The next part of the grounds was dedicated to those participating in the potjie competitions...and what a lot there were! Some had gone all out, with t-shirts printed with their group’s name ‘Ama Pot Pot’, banners you name it. There must have been about 15 stands or more for the different groups who had set up for the big cook off...some of which had been there since 9am (on what was an extremely hot day). There were jumping castles for the kids, Savanah, Jack Daniels and Amarula stands for the bigger kids and the Savanah stand even had a ‘bobbing for apples bucket’, where you could win a prize. Mark took advantage of this in about the first 5 minutes of being there...cooling himself off with the added bonus of winning a free drink. It didn’t take long for us to sniff out the boerewors rolls...lunch! YUM! Boerie and biltong and all things nice...

Gareth joined us a bit later, in time for the Legends Rugby match...which if you can believe is only the second rugby match I have ever seen live in my life! (I know... and yet I still call myself a South African...shameful!) All I can say is I’m glad I didn’t have to run around in that heat...not to mention scrumming up nice and close to all those sweaty bodies...sitting on the stand was hard work enough! ☺ Carol unfortunately had to leave us at half time, as she had an early flight the next morning...but I’m pleased to report that the Springbok legends didn’t disappoint!

The rest of evening proceeded with some proper SA music in the mix and somewhere along the line the scuba rattles made an appearance...or should I say my new scuba rattle came out, which lead to Mark asking ‘Where’s my rattle?’ I guess you had to be there at the time, but it had us in hysterics... should anyone at the tables next to us have heard, I could only imagine what would have gone through their heads... priceless! The evening came to a close, but not before the winners of the various competitions which had been going on throughout the day were announced...and I’m afraid to say that lucky streak I had a few years ago obviously completely wore itself out! Maybe better luck next time!

Gareth and Reinet have since headed off to sunny SA for a holiday, giving us the opportunity to temporarily 'have' a pet again. Mark is back in his element with a man's best friend...and has finally become a fully fledged member of The Lakes community...by walking Rocco everyday.

Then this past weekend the Redbull X Fighters were in town to entertain us with their daredevil motorcross stunts (seriously there is something on basically every weekend here). The arena was set up at JBR Walk (the Jumeriah Beach Residence Walk) just down the road from us and right on the sand at the beach...for what was a sell out show...something like 15,000 people! Once the show finally got underway (considering Mark and I had bought the cheapo standing tickets (but at least we were literally right in the front leaning against the track's barrier) ...we had already been standing for 2.5hrs before the show had even began...followed by a further 2 hours whilst the show was on), we weren't disappointed. One of the Sheikhs arrived, to introduce the X fighters and the Arabian Adventures, who must have organised the event, put of bit of a show on for the crowd, bringing in some of the Sheikh's 'pretty' camels all decorated, along with some Arabian sword fighters and obviously the bikers, who revealed themselves from behind big black robes. As soon as the display was over, our camera decided to run out of battery (as I had forgotten to charge it before we left). Thankfully it managed to last for a little bit longer, regardless of the flashing red light so we at least managed to get a few pics and videos. The riders tricks brought a few gasps, ooh's and ahh's, from what was generally a rather quiet crowd, at the amazement of the height of the bikers jumps, how they bent their bodies in some of the angles they did, how they managed to not loose or their bikes midair and how they managed to stay on the bike during the landing. All in all another great night out experiencing something different!