Today was a short side-track from the landscape and night sky photography. We got to see a bit of wildlife up close and personal. On one drive into the scrub forests, we came across a very large white rhinoceros. These are quite rare, and we were lucky to find him. Above, you can see him eyeing us and deciding if we are a threat or not.
Our lodge has two captive cheetahs that were rescued from families that raised them as pets, and then could not care for them any longer. They are not able to be released into the wild, because they do not know how to hunt, having been fed by humans their entire lives. They now live on an open area of several square miles, but still come to the main gate to be fed each morning. We were allowed to join and watch their feeding.
As can be seen above, we are able to get quite close to these cheetahs, and the bottom image shows most of our photo tour group clustered capturing images such as shown here.
The original white rhino decided we were not a threat, so he turned his back to us and walked away down the road. Seems a fitting image to close out this day.
We have now joined the photo tour with Squiver that we came to Namibia for, led by Ryan Dyar. Internet in Namibia is very slow, and frequently non-existant. This blog has been waiting in our queue to publish, and is actually being posted 10 days into the trip. As such, we already have quite a bit of experience with both Ryan and Squiver, and have got to say that both have been superb. Everything is meticulously planned, and when weather has interfered, backup plans were immediately put in place. We have been kept busy from before sunrise until well after sunset every day, and loved pretty much every minute of it.
I have wanted to learn how to improve my landscape and night sky photography for years, as I have never been happy with my results of those subjects. Ryan is a landscape and night sky master, which is why we specifically chose this tour. Though I still have a ways to go, Ryan has proved to be an excellent teacher, always willing to answer my barrage of questions, and to look at my images and suggest how to improve them. I think I now have a basis for moving further in this genre on my own.
We spent the first couple days photographing quiver trees. This is a tree that only grows in Southern Namibia, and is quite unique in shape, looking almost like they are upside down, with the roots reaching to the sky. There is a forest of them, scattered among a huge area declared to be a national monument of Namibia in 1995.
The area is so remote, and difficult to traverse, that we left our cameras outside overnight to capture enough sky images to build star trails. Though we worried that someone might come along and steal the cameras overnight, we were assured that it would be near impossible for anyone to find the cameras, let alone steal them. Sure enough, the next morning, I had to use a GPS program to lead me back to my camera. I would never have found it without such an aid.
The trees are scattered among an area also known as the Giant’s Playground, because of the massive boulders strewn about. Each of us wandered in different directions to find photogenic scenes, a few of which are represented above. (Note that the tree bottom-left is the same type as others, but I did some posterizing in Photoshop, to give it this magical appearance, complete with halo.)
Other scenes from the same forest. It would be easy to show dozens of interesting photos from this area, but in the interest of brevity have limited to these ten.
Just before leaving our cameras overnight, we grabbed some static star night images. The post processing of these images is quite time consuming, so I still have dozens of others waiting to be created from the raw photographs on our disks. I rather like this attempt at a silhouette of the trees, with the Milky Way above though.
We enjoyed our past trips to Africa, but have not been on that continent for 25 years. We have been on safaris to Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa, each on separate trips. It was time to visit this continent again. We have just finished a few days in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia and will be spending the next two weeks in Namibia, starting with a photographic safari we are joining tonight. Following that will be a couple weeks in Botswana, and then finishing with a few days in Johannesburg, South Africa.
This has been a LONG flight. We arrived in Johannesburg, our first stop in Africa, more than 30 hours after boarding our first flight in Cuenca. It was -2 degrees C (28 degrees F), as they were having a cold snap. We stayed just one night there, in a very nice boutique lodge, Outlook Lodge Lakefield in Benoni, just outside the airport, to give us a real bed and a bit of time to overcome our jet lag before continuing on to Windhoek, Namibia the following day.
On our first full day in Windhoek, we found a “Carnivore Feeding” tour at N/a’an ku sê Lodge that lasted 3 hours, and decided to join it, for our first introduction to Namibia wildlife. N/a’an ku sê is an animal rescue wildlife sanctuary, run by a non-profit organization. Our local guide for this tour, Saloman (middle-right) was excellent with animals, calling them for feeding time and allowing us to photograph each type, as they devoured steaks and chickens. He then followed with a brief but informative talk about each animal’s history (the name, age, and the species of each animal being fed).
The reserve is on 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres), which is huge. Each enclosed animal pen is thousands of acres in size, giving the animals a large area to roam. As we drove around the grounds, we noted how well maintained the wire fences were, as well as the small electric fences on both inside (to train the animals from approaching the main fence) and outside (to discourage burrowing animals from entering the pens). Every animal we saw was extremely healthy too.
Our first thoughts were how much nicer this looks than the equivalent (but MUCH smaller) facilities we have seen in Ecuador. Our second thought was… hmmm, doesn’t this remind you of Jurassic Park…?! (we instinctively started looking around for a loose dinosaur… ☺)
We started with a pack of wild dogs which are known to be vicious as they literally tear apart their prey. We saw the same animals when encountering them in the wild in Tanzania in 1991, though these were more healthy and well groomed. Next, we were introduced to a pair of Caracal, a feline that looks very similar to a lynx. The ears were fascinating to watch, as they moved almost constantly into different shapes, enabling the animal to locate the direction of prey.
Our third group included a pack of baboons (upper row). Namibian law makes it illegal for game sanctuaries to breed animals, to prevent them from allowing hunters to come and kill the animals for profit. Therefore, N/a’an ku sê provides means of birth control for each species. Initially, the baboon males were castrated for this reason. However, the local wild baboons sensed the females in heat, worked their way past the electric fences and impregnated the protected females. The result was a wave of unexpected births. Once the staff realized how crafty the wild baboons were, they implanted all females with a birth control chip.
Pen #4 was occupied by leopards. These leopards were a lot closer than ones we saw decades ago in the wild (the images above were taken when the leopards were no more than 5 or 6 feet from our cameras). We have never been able to get this close to such animals when they were in what appeared to be natural surroundings (unlike the zoo enclosures they are often seen in). All the animals were named, the 3-legged leopard is called “Lucky”, after surviving being caught in a leg trap and having the leg amputated. The older leopard is simply “Old Lady,” because when she came to the park, she was already considered very old for a wild leopard. That was 19 years ago, so Old Lady is now elderly indeed.
Out last stop was at the lion enclosure. Unlike the other animals, we were not allowed to leave the jeep this time. The male lion was brought here a couple years ago when it was captured by a farmer, after it had killed several of the farmer’s sheep. Unfortunately, once a predator gets a taste for sheep, they must either be killed or removed from the presence of such easy prey. Thus, this male was brought to the sanctuary. It is the only predator we saw that did not appear content with his surroundings, and lunged at the fence several times (top-center). Visitors are now kept in the vehicle, at a greater distance, with the hope that the lion will eventually become accustomed to humans and become less aggressive.
Our second day with a return to N/a’an ku sê Lodge, for their “cheetah walk.” If a cheetah is bottle fed as a baby, and then raised with humans, he will be as tame as a house cat. Though illegal, some people still do this, and then call for help when the animal has grown too large for them to keep any longer. By that time, the cheetahs cannot be released into the wild, because they never learned to hunt or to protect themselves from other predators. We walked for about an hour with two such cheetahs that the sanctuary rescued, often within a couple feet of us. This was an experience we had not originally expected to find, and it was enjoyable walking with them… when they decided to move. Just like house cats, they spent a large part of that hour lying down and ignoring the humans around them…
We finished yesterday by having our driver take us to a couple of local markets. First was the Single Quarter meat market in Katatura, where we had been told we should try the local Namibian beef, Kapana. We bought some from the vendor above (second row – left), and it was indeed tender and very tasty. Definitely gave us an incentive to try more beef in this country.
We also visited the vegetable and fruit open markets, which sell fresh vegetables and fruits, as well as supplying many services. One interesting food that we found in multiple locations was grubs (lower-left), which is a favorite snack food. There was also a TV repairman (second row – right), several seamstresses (third row), as well as hair dressers and other services.
All the while we were walking with the cheetahs, there was a large tower of giraffes nearby. As the scheduled end of the walk approached, one of the cheetahs sped off towards them, as seen above (cheetah is center-right in the photo). The giraffes responded by scattering in all directions, making the predator choose only one to pursue. Given the speed of the giraffes and the head start they had, it was pretty clear that the cheetah would have to return home to be fed once again.
Closing with a short 33 sec video showing how the meat is cut and processed in this local market.
We were staying with friends in San Francisco in a houseboat near the AT&T park, and our niece told us that the LGBT Pride Parade was happening the same weekend. Though we lived most of our lives a short distance from San Francisco, we had never seen this parade before, which is one of the largest and oldest of its type in the world. The parade route runs along Market Street in Downtown San Francisco from the Embarcadero to the Civic center with more than 100,000 spectators reported.
Yesterday there had been a Dykes on Bikes parade, which is a women’s motorcycle contingent. They also led off the LGBT Pride parade today, showing off their bikes… and often their bodies… in style.
Gay issues have been a hot topic for decades in San Francisco, and most local politicians support them. It has become standard for most of the elected officials and local celebrities to ride convertibles through the parade.
There were also several cars (and one bicycle taxi, as seen in the left image above) carrying various celebrities of the LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexual, and Transgender) community.
There were several causes being celebrated, though all related in some way to the LGBT community. The newspapers were saying that this parade gave a chance for straights to show their support and to have a party. Indeed, one cause in the parade was “straights for gay rights” (center). There were also several groups directed mostly at the current political climate of hatred being fostered in Washington (upper row and lower-right).
This is also a chance for various corporations to show their support for the LGBT community, with many more corporate floats and groups present than are shown above.
Along with the various groups, politicians, and corporations, there were interspersed individuals taking the opportunity to make personal statements, and celebrate being “characters attracting attention.”
There were even a few young kids brought along, usually in groups that were supporting keeping immigrant or non-traditional families together.
And whenever there is a parade, we always like to turn around and watch the audience. Today was no exception.
It has been four years since we last visited California. This time we came to attend our favorite niece’s graduation from UC Santa Barbara. Kerry graduated with high honors in Chemistry/Biochemistry. She will be starting her Ph.D. program in Organic Chemistry at UC Berkeley, ranked one of the top programs in the world, next month (July 2018). We were surprised to learn that UCSB has transformed from the party school reputation of the 1970’s (when we were in college) into one of the top public universities in the US, ranking #8 in the US New & World Report, #3 in California, #2 in impact on the sciences as measured by number of attributions to UCSB research papers, and with six noble laureates since 1998.
We started the weekend with a private dinner celebration with just family and Mary (upper-left in background), one of Kerry’s roommates. Pauline (Evelyn’s sister, and proud mother of Kerry) is seen center above, with Keith (father) center-right, sitting next to Evelyn. The bottom image shows Kerry opening our present, one that Evelyn painted of Kerry on elephant-back, from their recent trip to Bali and Thailand.
The next day, Kerry had a party where she invited close friends and colleagues that had the most impact on her undergrad life. A photo booth was set up, which proved to be a hit, as everyone got into the fun and hammed it up for the camera and for Kerry’s memories. It was obvious that Kerry was extremely popular and that her friends all knew how to let loose and have fun.
We learned a new college drinking game, beer dice (upper row). Late in the afternoon, we saw a naked student running down the street, and we were later told that the person lost in beer dice (though Kerry says that her house rules did not include that particular penalty…). Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves at the party.
The final day of our visit involved a group photo session with the entire graduating class of 80 CCS students. Mark (Kerry’s brother, bottom-left) came down to congratulate her after having done his first sky diving lesson that morning, and to be part of a family portrait (lower-right).
Kerry attended the College of Creative Studies (CCS), which has been called “a graduate school for undergraduates”. CCS is a special program within UCSB for highly motivated students in 8 majors, and their Class of 2018 graduated one week earlier than the other 5300+ students of UCSB. Kerry is seen above with close friends from her graduating class, dorm mates, and with Sasha (her dorm roommate), and neighbor (lower-left and lower-right).
As Kerry walks into her future, we want to give her kudos for her diligence and hard work. We’re quite proud of her accomplishments, as she was able to balance school, jobs, boys, sports, girl friends, all while having fun at the undergraduate level.
This week starts the annual Corpus Christi festival, which always starts 60 days after Easter. Though it is celebrated throughout Latin America, it is one of the largest parties in Cuenca, behind only the Paseo del Nino parade on Christmas Eve. There are fireworks every night for at least a week, and this time it is expected to last 10 days. A different organization or family funds the fireworks each night, and “castles” are always part of the show.
These castles are bamboo frameworks on which various fireworks sparklers, pinwheels, whistlers, and rockets are attached. The builders (a local company specializing in fireworks) put together the contraption in about an hour (bottom-center), while the firemen stand by and supervise (top-center) to assure no neighboring buildings are burned down, as happened in 2013 when errant fireworks burned down two church structures near the square.
When all is ready, two members of the crew approach the tower with flares, and ignite the base of the castle… then run fast (center) as the fuses burn to launch their Rube Goldberg machine into motion! This time the sparks were burning “hot”, and two young men were brushing off some burning embers from Evelyn’s clothes. A quick warning to be sure to wear a baseball cap, and cotton clothing. In the past few years, you could stand beneath and let the cold sparks fall on you, but something was different this time, and when the sparks hit, they hurt!
The fireworks always start with pinwheels on the bottom level. They then advance to streamers, or sparklers, or other displays as they work themselves up the bamboo castle frame. At the top, many have whistlers that caused all the kids around us to cover their ears, as they shrieked for joy. A couple of the castles then had aerial fireworks shoot out of the tops.
This entire event occurs within a few feet of the New Cathedral in Parque Calderon, in the center of Old Town Cuenca (about 4 blocks from where we live). The first night of celebration this year included waterfall fireworks on the face of the new cathedral (upper-right). Other fireworks were aimed into the sky just a few feet from the church (left and bottom-right).
The park was crammed with audience watching the show. Last night there were four separate castles, each fired off at roughly half hour intervals, and last about 5 to 10 minutes each. Between the actual fires, it was common to see small kids run out to the towers for a closer look (center-right), while others were kept in check by riding their parent’s shoulders (lower-left and upper-left). At the end of the 3rd castle, it started raining and people ducked underneath building cover, where the band was playing. The last castle was fired a bit early so people could get home before being drenched from the rain.
Through it all, there were plenty of vendors, especially those selling sweets. The newspaper said there were 120 vendors in the area, so this is only a small sampling of the mimes (upper left), food (upper-center and lower-left), clowns (lower-right), bubble wands (center-right), balloon animals (center), and even a video podcaster (left-center).
The third night of Corpus Christi, we decided to stay home and watch the fireworks from our living room window. I just stuck my camera on the window sill, and captured dozens of images like this one.
Life in Cuenca seems like an unending celebration for some aspect of daily life! Even when a major event like Corpus Christi is not happening, there is usually something going on. It is a rare week when we cannot see fireworks from at least some of our windows at home.
Soledad Riquetti de Gould (aka Sole), owner of La Yunta restaurant arranges trips for expats weekly, usually for cooking classes. Yesterday, she arranged a special trip to Cetreria (the Falconry Center) and the Yurak Allpa Zoológico Refugio in Tarqui, which were featured recently in an article on CuencaHighLife. We were so intrigued with the article that we registered for the tour as soon as it came up, and became part of a group of 16.
The highlight of the trip was our visit to the new Cetreria, where we witnessed a remarkable relationship between bird and man. Jose Pachéco, one of the bird handlers (seen above), has worked for the center for 6 years as a volunteer. Jose is also training to be a veterinarian, with a focus on birds. With his gentleness and daily interaction with each bird, Sole says she has seen remarkable personality changes with the wild raptors he cares for. Jose can be easily be considered the region’s Bird Whisperer.
Guests and school children are able to interact with three birds of prey (named Ana, Lucy and Oliver) that have been rescued after being injured. Where possible, these birds are brought back to health, and then reintroduced back into the wild.
This was initially part of the Yurak Allpa Animal Rescue center (see more at the end of this post). Realizing the birds needed more open space for flying, Alberto Vele was finally able to obtain the current land just down the road a short distance, and opened the falconry center in February of this year.
Everyone had an opportunity to have the birds fly to their outstretched arm with a protective glove holding some food, to get selfies taken with the birds. We were taught to hide the glove, until Jose yelled “ven” (the Spanish word for “come”), then hold out your arm as the bird swooped in for the treat you held.
We also visited the Yurak Allpa Zoológico Refugio, shown above. It is often referred to as the “Tarqui Zoo,” but has a serious purpose of rescuing animals that were injured in the wild, or often mistreated as pets. Most of the animals are in closed off areas, with monkeys being behind wire fences to keep them from escaping. The teeth on the white-fronted capuchin (lower-right) made sure that when we fed them sugar cane, it was at a distance and only from our hand to theirs. Sometimes we threw the food at them, as they were masterful at playing catch. The monkeys would lift their heads up high, and let the cane juice drip into their mouths. One monkey even pounded his cane to tenderize the hard parts before chewing it. Once finished, the monkeys sometimes threw back the spent cane at the guests, telling us they were ready for another piece.
There were several emus, and Alberto trained them to work. Several members of our group lay down on a wooden bench and had corn kernels spread across their backs (upper-left). The emus ate up the kernels quickly, resulting in a shiatsu-style back massage.
This has become quite a wonderful education center for the kids in the region, where they can see and feed domestic animals such as horses and cuy, plus feed wild animals including parrots, deer, ostriches, emus, monkeys, and raptors.
After visiting both these rescue centers, we had a delicious lunch at La Yunta restaurant. Though they are a 30 minute drive outside of Cuenca, it is a restaurant we have visited many times before. As usual, the food was scrumptious.
An American kestrel became a favorite target for bird portraits!
At the end of our India and UAE trip, we returned to New York City to spend some more time in the US before returning to Ecuador. We spent a couple nights with long-time friends Zoya and Vladimir, and their parents, in New Jersey. We had wanted to take photos of the lower Manhattan skyline, which has been on our photo bucket list for some time. I had saved images of the Brooklyn Bridge that I showed to Vladimir. He also enjoys photography, and offered to drive us to Dumbo Park, at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, where the images were shot.
The secret to capturing good images has always been about searching for the right locations to shoot from and waiting for the best light. None of us knew for sure where Dumbo Park was located, nor what it had to offer, beyond that one view we had discovered in our online search. The day had been completely cloudy, but it cleared up enough around twilight to capture the sunset, and we ended up with the images shown above.
For the last two nights, we stayed at the Holiday Inn in Long Island City. The hotel was surprisingly good (OK, I was skeptical of “Holiday Inn,” but this really was a top-notch hotel). The above images of the Manhattan skyline were all shot from our room balcony.
I happened to open my eyes around 3AM the first night. About to roll over, I glanced out the window, saw the moon (upper image) and immediately woke up, to set up the tripod and catch that shot. It was s-o-o-o-o-o cold (32 deg F, which is quite literally, freezing!) that I actually shot the photo through our hotel window instead of outside on our balcony.
One of the latest tourist attractions in Manhattan is the National Geographic Virtual Aquarium. We often go to the larger aquariums in cities we visit, so I decided to get tickets to visit this one. The video technology was interesting (all the above images are actually of video screens), including one 3D section at the end (lower right is a father and son watching the show). However, it felt gimmicky, and left us disappointed after less than half an hour for the entire tour. We cannot recommend this to adults, particularly not at the sky high prices charged.
The second night in Brooklyn, the skies were clear, and we decided to return to Dumbo Park for another run at the bridge photos. As you can see above, the weather made quite a bit of difference in the result, and we are glad we returned to capture the blue hour.
Our return flight to Ecuador left at midnight, making it seem like a waste to pay for a hotel room that night. As such, we stored our bags at the hotel and wandered the neighborhood for awhile. We finally decided to go to the airport around 5PM. Wow! If we had known what was waiting for us, we would have gone earlier!
We were flying Business Class back to Ecuador. Being over 65, all flights to and from Ecuador are half price for us, and we had a lot of bags. The result was that the difference between Economy (pay for extra luggage) or Business (3 bags free) was tiny. This also gave us access to the American Airlines VIP lounge at the JFK airport — which turned out to be a real treat! Starting off, we found a wide selection of wines and champagne (good stuff too, not cheap brands) that was all free. The food bar was also free, and had some really great food — in fact, some of the best we have had on this entire trip. That included scallops to die for — some of the best I have ever tasted.
And to top that off, the best internet connection I have ever had — 100 Mb/s download, 200 Mb/s upload (yes, twice the upload than download) with only 6ms ping. Sorry for the tech-speak, but for those who understand these terms, that is 5 times better than we had in California, and 100 times better (yeah, we only get 1Mb/s in Cuenca…) than here at home in Cuenca.
We considered just skipping the flight and living there… However, I have to admit, it is nice to be home again now, with our own bed, shower, and home cooked food. ☺
After a couple days in Dubai, we decided to go the capital of the UAE, Abu Dhabi for one day and night. Barti (our local guide) suggested that we might enjoy stopping at the camel race track. He told us that they were not racing today, but would be doing some training, and we quickly agreed to this side trip. Camel racing is an important part of the culture, and was known in the past as the sport of the sheiks.
We arrived at the camel racing track, and watched the unfolding scenario. Some trainers were arriving in groups (upper left). Some ran their camels on foot (upper right), while others exercised their camels in small groups, riding one while others without riders (2nd from top, both left and right). Still others ran a single camel (lower right).
Perhaps the most interesting… and perplexing… were the camels that ran with no person on their backs, but instead had a small dummy attached (3rd from top right). We later discovered that these were robot jockeys (bottom left, where Pauline is holding one), used to simulate a whip giving stimulation to the camels to speed them up at the proper times. Jockeys from age 9-10 years old were used in the past, but in 2004, these robots were developed to eliminate human rights abuses. Indeed, when it was pointed out, we saw some camel owners in their SUVs running alongside the track with their remote controls, activating the robots as part of their training.
Another stop along the ways was the large fish market in Abu Dhabi. We often enjoy seeing these around the world. As we began to realize was typical of UAE, this was one of the largest — and the cleanest (no “fishy smell” here!) we have seen in our many travels around the world.
Nearby the fish market was the pier where fishing boats docked and brought in their catch. We arrived too late to see the fish offloaded, but still enjoyed walking the pier and watching the fisherman putting away their nets.
We also stopped in to see the Louvre, simulating the famous museum in Paris. The museum blended art from the west and the east. However the most remarkable aspect was the architecture, where there was a beautiful use of shadow and lights.
While I am not a fan of visiting hotels just to see their lobby, we made an exception for the Emirates Palace hotel. The lobby is supposed to reproduce the feeling of a Royal Palace, and is the closest non-royalty (like us…) can come to seeing how “the other half lives.”
We also visited Ski Dubai, in the Mall of the Emirates, one of the largest shopping malls in the world, located just outside of Dubai. This was an indoor ski resort, including a toboggan run (lower).
In Abu Dhabi, we stayed at the Shangri-La Hotel, where we had a magnificent sunset view of the Sheikh Zayed Mosque (center). This is an amazing mosque made entirely of white marble, which can hold up to 41,000 people during prayers. As with everything else here, this grand mosque was just completed in 2007, yet felt like an iconic site that had been here since ancient times. The design and quality of the construction exceeded expectations.
Construction cranes prevailed throughout both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as the UAE races to become a world center in finance, media development, tourism, and many other arenas.
There were already two videos in yesterday’s blog post, so I moved this one here. It is a 90 second clip showing the Dubai Fountains, starting from ringside at the Dubai Fountains and finishing from our hotel balcony in downtown Dubai.
This concludes our time in the UAE. I must admit that I had expected to be disappointed by a gaudy environment. Instead, I found that everything, while huge and over-the-top, kept an air of elegance, cleanliness and quality. If you focus only on the shopping malls, then this would be disappointing place to visit. However, looking beyond the shopping, it is a photographer’s delight. Personally, we hope to return at some point, to capture images that we missed, and to see how the skyline continues to evolve.
THE BIGGEST! TALLEST! THE MOST GRANDEUR! Over-the-top in everything!
That is our first impression on entering Dubai — and that feeling never leaves you as long as you are here. The tallest building in the world is here — the Burj Khalifa at 163 storeys high (“Burj” means tower in Arabic, so there are a lot of buildings with name Burj in town), seen top-left and center. And the skyline puts any other city in the world to shame. This is not a city of straight blocks soaring into the sky. Rather, the Dubai government gives preference in building permits to any structure that is unusual with envelope-pushing architecture. That gives you the twisting towers (lower-left and upper-right), the crazy offset, stacked buildings, soaring beacons, as well as the elegant shape of the Opera House (lower-right), among many others.
Dubai is known as a shopping mecca, and many wealthy people fly in from other countries for quick trips to the many malls. There is an entire shopping souk just dedicated to gold jewelry, with gold pieces that could only be worn in parties of the wealthiest circles in the world (lower row). There is even a diamond so large as to be listed in the Guinness book of records.
Visiting the local golf driving range not only gives you a chance to improve your game, but also provides a impressive panorama of the city skyline (center).
We only visited two shopping malls(out of 90), and found it as magnificent, and over-the-top as we had come to expect by this time. One entire floor was dedicated to stores catering to children and expectant mothers. A very small portion of the lower floor held a skating rink, where we saw a team practicing, along with dozens of families enjoying themselves. (The rink was actually quite large, but only occupied a tiny portion of the floor — the mall is that big…!) Then, another mall had an enclosed ski slope, with ski instructors from Austria.
The Dubai Fountains came to life each night around sundown, and continued with a different show every half hour until midnight. This is very similar to the fountains at Bellagio in Las Vegas and in Yerevan, Armenia (our review of that fountain here). The entire show could even been seen from our hotel balcony. A video of it will be included in tomorrow’s post.
As the night fell, the lights of the buildings came on, giving the city an entirely different look. The upper image was taken from our hotel balcony, while the lower one was at the Dubai Marina. Another iconic building in Dubai is the Burj al Arab, which is shaped in the form of a sail (middle left), which we enjoyed at sunset.
Surprisingly, very few locals seemed to know the details of the nightly Burj Khalifa light show. This was created for New Year’s Eve last year, and originally scheduled to end in January of this year. We had heard rumors of such a show, and asked various hotel concierge, waiters and guards, but no one seemed to know, though one insisted it would not be on Monday nights. We were therefore surprised when the music started, and the tower began to light up, as seen above.
On weekends, there was an even more elaborate light show, that almost none of the locals knew about. Evelyn was having dinner with her sister at a restaurant across from the Burj Khalifa, and the waiter told them to wait until 10:00 PM for the grand show. Sure enough, a far more elaborate light show started, as seen upper-left and lower-right. Evelyn’s iPhone captured those laser images.
Along one construction wall are a series of historic photos. Above is a scene that not only captures some kids having fun off a boat, but also shows the Dubai skyline as it existed in 1990. The entire city was comprised of only five highrises, plus many older single story homes.
In 1989, the government of Dubai decided to create the city you see today. Every building you see on the skyline of today (lower) was built within the last 25 years! There is still construction going on everywhere, and they seem nowhere near done. The city government has long term plans to complete all major construction by 2021 though, so the pace may slow down soon.There are more than 1500 skyscrapers now, and more on the way.
This is a rather long 3:20 video, which shows the entire laser light show that was first shown New Year’s Eve from Thursday to Saturdays. “Light Up 2018” Laser Show set a world record for the largest light and sound show on a single building, the Dubai Burj Khalifa.
It caught us off guard, as nobody seemed to know the details. We were told this show would stop being shown by the end of March, so were glad to catch it while still active.
Here is a shorter 2 minute video showing the “standard” light show of the tower.
If you visit Dubai, we highly recommend contacting Dubai 1 Tours, led by Barti Rajan, who can be contacted at baree@hotmail.com or info@dubai1tours.com, URL: dubai1tours.com. He offers customized tours, like the one we took, as well as unique pre-packaged tours to see the camel practice facility.
Photo Galleries
At the top of this page is a menu that will take you to a variety of galleries showing our favorite images.
We were staying with friends in San Francisco in a houseboat near the AT&T park, and our niece told us that the LGBT
We also visited Ski Dubai, in the Mall of the Emirates, one of the largest shopping malls in the world, located just outside of Dubai. This was an 
