Al Ain

For those of you who haven’t heard already, my visit to Al Ain didn’t exactly go as planned. In spite of the problems I encountered, I managed to enjoy my visit overall. I’m only putting a few of the pictures I took on this blog. I’ll put the rest of them on Facebook soon.

So, the trip started off well. The drive to Al Ain was very quiet and I didn’t see any crazy drivers (which is pretty much unheard of in this country). However when I arrived I noticed a bit of smoke coming from my car. This was obviously very scary. I eventually managed to find a mechanic to look at my car. The good news was that it is a fairly inexpensive problem to fix. The bad news (at that time) was that I would have to wait to Saturday because of the holiday for them to get the parts necessary to fix the problem and that continuing to drive the car could turn this into a very expensive problem.

At this point, I decided I would send an extra night in Al Ain. I was easily able to book another night at the hotel (though it did cost a little more than the first night) and I was also able to check-in a few hours early which was nice. As the hotel I was staying in was very nice this really wasn’t a hardship.

View from my hotel room

I then went to see the nearby Jahili Fort. On the way there I met this man who seemed nice enough and said he wanted to practice English. After we were done looking at the fort, he wanted my number so he could call sometime to practice English and I told him to call in like a week. He called me within an hour. It was clear he would be a problem, so I blocked his number. But he called back from another number a bit later and so I blocked that number too. I haven’t heard from him since, so I guess he got the message that I wasn’t interested in hearing from him. Anyway, the fort itself was interesting, free and quite quiet.

Entrace to Jahili Fort

I then went to look at the Al Ain Palace Museum, which was also free, quiet, and interesting.

Entrance to the Al Ain Palace Museum

On Friday, I attempted to take a taxi to the top of Jebel Hafeet, the second highest mountain in the UAE. I had originally thought of climbing the mountain but there really isn’t a good place to do that as the road up the mountain has no division between cars and the side. Also, there is a lot of construction going on right now. I managed to see the bottom of the mountain but some weird reason the taxi wouldn’t take me up. I saw a few other taxis taking other people up! As this place is a bit out of town and not really near anything else, I definitely wouldn’t have found an available taxi there. So, I gave up on that idea. I tried to visit the Al Ain National Museum but it was closed because of the holiday. I walked around town a bit but I really didn’t do a whole lot that day.

On Saturday morning, I was hopeful that I would get my car back. I began by phoning the number of the place I had been told that my car would be transferred but the guy there had no clue about my car. I then tried calling the number of the place where I had left my car but I was told that I had the wrong number. At this point, I kind of panicked. I went to the place I had left my car and it was sitting out front which was a definite relief. The guy there called this other place to come get my car. Apparently, not too many places want to (know how to?) fix Chevrolets here because they are not so popular. I found out that I would have to wait longer to have my car fixed because the supplier was not open. The guy there offered to drive me to the top of Jabel Hafeet because he was not busy. So, I did get to see the mountain from the top and I found out was was meant when I had read about people climbing the mountain. There is a bit of a climb you can do to the very top from the final parking lot. I was much too drained to do that then but I think I’ll go back sometime in the future and climb to the top.

View from near the top of Jebel Hafeet

I took a bus back to Abu Dhabi (which is unbelievably cheap by the way).