Great Start

Wheelin' four fun

It is officially 2010 in my blog writing and I am only fifteen days behind schedule. We planned to go four wheeling the day after new years and asked for the latest time slot that we could get so that we could sleep in. Since the sun goes down so early in winter (it’s 70 degrees in the winter here) time Sam suggested that we go no later than 2pm and we setup our quad riding for that time.

Sam is a hilarious tour guide. I am in Group A and when he wants to get us together he says “Aye” and then everyone in the group chirps back at him “Aye, Aye, Aye”. I’m sure to others we look like a momma duck with her ducks walking in a haphazard line behind her “Aye, Aye, Aye”. Sam also says “All for one” and then before anyone in the group can reply “One for all” he says it himself like it is a single phrase “All for one and one for all” which cracks me up every time he says it. Sam also likes to have surprises for us all the time but they are usually convenient for him, like rather than giving us time for lunch he will buy us lunch and get us to eat it on the bus. Not that I would ever complain about free food.

We were given a lesson on how to drive the four wheelers and told that if we mess around we will be taken off of the bikes and have to find our own way home. There were 13 of us in the group and we all got our own four wheelers and headed out into town and then out on some dirt roads. We first stopped by the red sea, then at a Bedouin village and again at another spot along the beach. Driving the four wheelers was fun and there was a time that I got mine to fishtail pretty hard which made my heart race but most of the time it was pretty calm driving in a line. It would have been cooler to have a smaller group or more freedom in where we went so that we could drive over things and go really fast, it was still a lot of fun though. When we stopped at the Bedouin village we were sold tea and little girls were selling the string bracelets they made. One of the little girls came up to the Kiwis in the group of Asian descent and put her fingers to her eyes and pulled outwards. It was really funny because it was being done by a little girl who didn’t know any better and we all reacted by laughing. This only encouraged her and she continued to make the action over and over again. I have a picture of her doing it in my pictures below.

For dinner we went as a group to another restaurant that Sam took us to. A couple of members of the group got there before the rest of us and talked with the owners and told them another restaurant was giving us all 20% off and told the restaurant they needed to top it or we would eat elsewhere and the restaurant agreed to give us 25% off (There wasn’t actually another restaurant offering us any discount). I sat at a table with a guy named Sandal and a preteen girl that was selling bracelets came up to him. Earlier in the night this same girl had approached Sandal and asked him to buy a bracelet and he didn’t buy one. The girl recognized Sandal and saw that he had a bracelet on his arm and the girl became irate. The girl started to insist that Sandal needed to also buy a bracelet from her now and he tried to tell her he didn’t want one but he isn’t a very forceful guy and she was a very persistent that he buy one. After the girl had hassled him for a while it looked like he was going to cave in and then Janelle spoke up and told the girl he didn’t want one and that she should go away. The little girl flipped out on Janelle yelling at her and telling her to mind her own business. At this point we called over someone from the restaurant and had the girl removed.

January 1st is also Sandal’s birthday and after dinner the restaurant brought him out a cake. Then the restaurant staff moved the glass covering the table to one side leaving a portion of the table not covered by glass and then out came a midget who was lifted on to the table. Music started pumping through some nearby speakers and the midget started dancing on the table shaking ever inch of himself. It was hilarious and as usual the dancing ended in a conga line.

Today I laid by the pool, rode four wheelers in the desert and saw a midget dancing, off to an amazing 2010!

CLICK ON THE PICTURE BELOW TO SEE ALL OF TODAY'S PICTURES

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