OT - Dune bashing in a GMC Yukon

[Lippyp]

My wife and I arrived home yesterday after a short holiday in Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates. The main purpose of the trip apparently was quality time in the gold souk (Guys, if you really want to score some points with the woman in your life this is the place to go, about 200+ jewelery shops in one place, gold and diamonds galore!. My wife is a hardcore haggler so some bargains (alledgedly) were had, I guess being a corporate salesperson for IBM teaches you some useful skills!)

In between shopping and eating we managed to squeeze a day trip out into the desert and up into the mountains in guess what? a brand spanking new GMC Yukon, sadly I didn't get to drive it and I have to say that when you're 6'3" tall the third row of seats are a little cramped but that baby just ate up the dunes and rocky mountain tracks like they weren't there. At one point we were pointing almost straight down the side of a massive dune with just sand visible in the windscreen later on rock crawling up a river bed. Not sure what engine it had in it but as gas was about $1. a gallon for premium unleaded I guess size didn't really matter, put it this way, you very rarely see a diesel out there! It actually seemed to out perform the Toyota Land cruiser that was with us off road and certainly sounded better.

Didn't see any of our trucks but then nobody drives old cars out there. The police cars and some of the Taxis are Chevy Caprices and I did see two matching yellow Lamborghini Diablo's parked outside a restaurant. Great place, generally very friendly people, they even have a Harley dealership!

The only problem we encountered was British Airways cancelling all their direct flights in and out of the Gulf countries so we ended up coming home a day late via Frankfurt on a Lufthansa flight.