Camel racing

My 19+ hour journey was relatively uneventful. Time went by surprisingly quickly.


I arrived in Abu Dhabi around 8:30 pm Wednesday February 4th. Jo and Dave collected me from the airport.

Stayed up with Dave till about 11:30pm...... And then crashed!!

Jodie woke me up when she got home from work (Thursday @3:30pm). They took me out for Lebanese food; really good Lebanese food!!


Friday and Saturday are the UAE's weekend. We got up early Friday morning and went to the camel races.

I was a little uncomfortable at first as I wasn't sure how I/ we would be received.


It didn't take long to relax. The Emirate men were very welcoming.


They even offered us coffee and ginger tea..... The ginger tea is wonderful!!!!!


These camels run around an 8km track. I didn't know that camels ran, and I never expected them to run that far.

The camels are corralled into a chute. The race begins once the gate lifts up.

Then it's a free for all. The gaggle of camels come charging out.... They don't all go the right way (some get turned around and come back).

One of the highlights was getting to be a passenger in the video taping vehicle (not sure what to call it).

Camels are pretty graceful. The poor things do froth at the mouth something fierce!

This camel above was cooling off after his race.

The camels have electronic jockeys (pictured above). As I understand it, they used to have very young children doing the job.

-Camels are shy when you first meet them.
-Camels have horrible teeth.
-Camels can run fast.
-Camels have big feet.
-Camels have bristly fur/ hair (not sure if it's the former or latter).

Gotta run.