Road Trip

Part II of The Night Owl

I heard the gentle lapping of the waves on the shore. I was still dreaming of being transported to another world, or going back at the beginning of time. I thought I heard the screaming of Pterodactyls searching for fish as the early sea frothed with abundance of one celled organisms.

The Dawn of Time.

But as I slowly opened my eyes I felt the hard rocks on my back and saw the soft morning light was already creeping inside the habitat.
My watch read 6:00 am. The alarm didn't go off.
What the...! I almost slept for two hours.
I opened the zipper door and saw the lightening of dawn.

Still half awake I scrambled for my tripod and rig and noticed that the lens attached is different from what REMEMBERED putting on before i went to sleep two hours ago. My head is still throbbing with pain and my still sluggish brain just couldn't register what was happening. I just stood there perplexed for a few moments and realized that SOMEONE has switched my borrowed 10-20 to something else during my helpless state of drunkenness and stupor. Sneaky!


I rushed outside and almost tripped on the rocks when i saw the culprit sitting on the sand with my lens on his camera with a big grin on his face.

It was getting lighter, i grabbed the lens and wasted no time on trying to find a good angle close to the shore but to my dismay it is not possible to make long exposures anymore.


Last resort was to use my Cokin tobacco graduated filter to put some colors on the bland sky. The sunrise that day was not that spectacular I have to admit. The clouds are less attractive, but with plenty of foreground interest, long exposure could have provided interesting results.
Oh well better luck this time.

I went to the other side of the road across the beach once the sun was up and took some more photos of bushes, rocks and hills and more rocks.

It's lenten season which means breakfast was chicken sausages for me. I really really wanted to sink my teeth into the plat du jour.
Grilled pork belly.


Looking back a few minutes ago, watching the sunrise while sitting on the shore gives a unique feeling everytime. As the drama unfolds before your eyes you always get a sense of peace inside you, watching a new day being born and thinking that on the other side of the world another day ends.

The infamous G7 (group 7)

Actually not all. Im on group 4 and another one from group 2. We kinda don't like our own groups so we merged with group 7 which is hell lot more fun!

After breakfast there was the group shot where you have to stupidly wave your hand and give your best smile. While almost everybody is dressed in black and white ( black for the so called "masters" and white for us "newbies"), I wore a pink shirt. hehe


Tents are packed, stuffed on the trunk and we are off to the roads again. The Fujayrah coastline is beautiful, its beaches glistening on the morning sun and the road seemed endless.

The trip then is pretty straightforward. We had the beaches at our left and the rocky cliffs on our right.

Next stop was the Al Bidyah mosque known for its unique design with its rather queer looking minarets. Built at around 1146 A.D according to radiocarbon analysis, is the oldest known mosque on the UAE.

Overlooking the mosque is a fort like tower on a top of a rocky hill.


And while everybody seems to be having with them big lenses for such landscapes like this I saw this girl at about 5 years old clicking and snapping anything and shouting "Silhouettes"!
I say she's got more sense compared to everybody feeling macho with there ultra telephotos, she has a 10-20 ultra wide angle! Go kiddo!

"I can show you a thing or two with my Ultra Wide, this is not a sports match so why you buggers bring 500mm's?"

"Sunstars" at Khor Fakkan

We stopped at Khor Fakkan to gather our wits. After a useless stopover we headed to Kalba where the famous "crabbing area" can be found. During the crabbing season there are...well..lots of crabs crawling around especially at night. You can camp here and take your pick on the juicy shelled crustaceans.

Crabbing station

Then we headed home via the rock tunnels that leads us back to Hatta and we stopped over for some snaps of the rocky mountain views. And then the highway patrol came and started shouting at us demanding we stop and go back to our cars. What! Can we not take photos of rocks anymore? Whats your say UAE?

I was taking a leak halfway when i heard the sirens and the megaphones. So i was "done" half empty.

We still didn't take our lunch so having chicken on a running car is quite close to having it while on flight.

Chicken wings anyone?

So for road tripping here on the UAE, if you can go as early as possible you can travel from coast to coast and be back after sundown and have loads of pictures and stories to tell.

It was quite an exhilarating experience and with a close call from the police it added up to the spice of the trip.

The Night Owl

Mar 20 2009 Fri

It was a late Thursday night, the rush hour traffic plus the fact that it is going to be a weekend proved to be difficult for everybody to get the convoy going to the other side of the Dubai coastline, to the emirate of Fujairah.

This was a part of an outdoor trip of a photography group which i was in, and which i was out, and with a little bit of angelic persuasion i was "in" again. lol.
Well i wouldn't wanna miss this part.
And the fun has just began.

We started from Dubai at around 10:30 pm with convoy of close to 40 vehicles ( sedans, 4x4 cruisers, Jeeps, a Hummer and three mini buses).
At number three position we obviously should be the third car on the convoy but guess what, as stubborn as a dust bunny, in 30 minutes we are already miles away from the main group and speeding up into the night with the equally mulish car No. 20 and No.28 close behind us!
Talk about male pigheadedness.

The Night Owls

In short we got scolded and stopped somewhere at Ras Al Kaimah, ate some superb chicken sandwiches and waited for the convoy to catch up while enjoying the cool night air.

The drive to the camping site took more than three hours since the convoy was slow moving. I didn't enjoy the landscape much because it was dark but i know that we are passing by the rocky mountain cliffs carved for the roads we are on.

When i smelled the sweet and tangy scent of exposed rocks on a low tide, the algae, the decay of those dead beach critters and salty air I knew we are right on the spot.

The Habitats (171 seconds)

Soon tents where brought up and bonfires lit and in no time the place was filled with thick smoke from the grilled pork steaks. Yeah UAE! And "drinkable fluids" too. The papaitan is close to heavenly.

Moonshine (310 seconds)

The glare of Dubai's city lights are absent on this remote area, it was close to pitch black and VLE or very long exposure shots are a good way to test wether your rig can handle "amp noise" very well. But its too dark that I cant lock focus so going manual on hyperfocal distance method is necessary.

Starlines over Fujairah (372.8 seconds)

The D40 did quite well on 300+ seconds and i think i can even go further without problems.
Well, shame on the higher pixel Nikons. Lets see if you can beat D40 on VLE's.
A warning though: Turn off the noise reduction function!

Stars and clouds (261 seconds)

If you examine closely the stars are blurred in a concentric way. This means that the earth is rotating. I was so sleepy i couldn't get anymore of this.

View from inside the Habitat (171 seconds)

A few glasses of scotch made me dizzy at almost 4 am and decided to have an hour of sleep before sunrise.

I would soon realize that the lack of sleep and some scotch on the bloodstream and then hitting the sack very late is not a very good idea if you want to catch some early morning action.

Next: Road Trip.

Route (green line)