Monday, November 30, 2009

Hoopoes!

Okay, you folks are a bunch of jokers! That photo on the beach was staged! Purely the result of having Martin there to take the pic for me. And as long as I am tall and fair and relatively light haired, I'll never be invisible here. But remember, it's all about the illusion of invisibility, not the actual super power itself.

In other news, I went to Bahrain today. Total anticlimax. Can't see much reason to return since most of the same stores are in the expensive Al Rashid mall in Khobar. And all of them full of things I have no desire to purchase. Well, I can drink alcohol and eat pork, I can drive, and I can wear whatever the hell I want in Bahrain so it may have some small redeeming qualities. Regardless of these charms, I had to leave KSA to activate my multiple exit visa so that is now mission accomplished.

Re the title of the post: I checked a couple of bird books out of the camp library. That lovely, exotic little bird with the thin bill and head crest I mentioned a couple of posts ago? That is a hoopoe. They usually migrate across the Arabian peninsula from Africa to India but apparently some have set up permanent homes here in Dhahran. On a warm, sunny morning and again around sunset, I've seen as many as 8 or 10 around my apartment building. They aren't terribly afraid of people but they are small and hard to photograph. Here's my best attempt. Once you see them, you never mistake them for anything else. Striking markings.


I've also got some photos of the Aramco beach at Ras Tanura on the Persian Gulf. Ras Tanura is an Aramco camp like Dhahran but very small, only a few hundred people. It is located about 10-12 miles north of Khobar which is basically right outside Dhahran camp. The beach is restricted to Aramco employees only (note the restriction in the photo below on slaughtering sheep, which is apparently a common practice on the public beaches...ew). There are Aramco buses that run between DHA and RT daily. Based on our view of the trash-draped scrub on the other side of the fences, the RT beach is somewhat reminiscent of Disneyland. Still, it was a nice place to spend the morning. Martin and I decided that we'd like to return--with flip flops, a good book, and a cooler of juice drinks.

Aramco beach rules...NO slaughtering sheep.

My friend Martin.

Looking back down the Ras Tanura camp beach to Khobar in the far distance.

No comments: