One Bird, One Stone, or Day 70 in Doha

Best laid plans, eh?

Well, I did get up and make crepes, and those were delicious. Daedri and Abdalla and I baked out in the morning sun (it was probably 90F or mid-30sC) while eating them with Nutella and bananas, strawberry jam, or baked apples.

I put on my sunscreen, and the two of them (with their dark skin) just laughed.

Brent and Zane came a little after, so we made Brent finish up the crepes, and we were off to find the camel race track at Al Shahiniyah.

(I probably shouldn't have said right as we were leaving that I wasn't sure this was the right race track...)

It was less than 15 minutes away, and when we got there, we saw random groups of camels milling around. Abdalla pulled over to ask some guys about the races and... they were cancelled. The heat was too much for this early in spring, apparently, so they were pushed to Monday or Friday, or some other day.

We still managed to get yelled at for driving too close to the camels that were practising on the track.

Abdalla proposed going to Dukhan, which is on the west side of Qatar. I was against it at first (we all had work to do), but when we heard that we were already halfway there, it was a go!

So my original goal was taken from me, but I got to check another item off my bucket list! Daedri said that it was hitting two birds with one stone, but I fully intend on coming back for a real camel race.

During the roadtrip (which only took about 45 minutes to get from EC to Dukhan), we played the Qatar version of the roadtrip game "Cows." The original goal is to count the most cows on your side of the car, trying to beat the other side. If there is a cemetery on your side of the road, all your cows "die" and you start back at zero.

The Qatar version uses camels and mosques.



There was a gorgeous beach; it was just hazy enough that there was no way to tell where the sky met the sea. We waded up to our rolled-up-pants-legs, picking shells and skipping stones.

I put on more sunscreen, and Abdalla just shook his head.

The blue water was cool (so of course, Abdalla made some geeky joke about convection) and the sand was smooth. I wish we could have stayed longer (and were more prepared) but I'm so glad I got that refreshment in.

And now I have a hankering for a roadtrip to the north.