Last weekend my wife Wendy woke up and announced that she was ‘bored’. Our plans for a short break abroad seemed to have fallen through and she wanted ‘to get away, or do something different.’
“Oakaay!” I said “what do you have in mind?”
“How about a drive down to Al Durrat and a BBQ on the beach (if we can find one) or in the desert at sunset?”
Sigh! Poor me! It sounded a lot like camping, which is something I’ve not done since I was forced to wear matching long grey socks and school shoes.
I considered the idea briefly and said: “all right, but how ‘bout we ask our neighbour Paul Saunders and his family if they wanted to join us”.
I’d heard it was pot holes all the way, and if we were to go ‘bush bashing’ or ‘sand crawling’ in search of a beach I wanted to have someone I trusted around to pull us out when we got bogged down in the middle of no-where. I also kinda thought that if Paul wasn’t interested I’d have an excuse to ‘do it another day’.
Anyway, he thought it was a great idea so Wendy joyously trotted off to the shops to buy BBQ supplies. Me, I was so excited that I sank further into the sofa and channel surfed for sports. (which is my idea of a lovely weekend).
Wendy was a flurry of activity, filling cooler boxes with drinks, salads, meats, bread and cake. As well as packing the BBQ equipment, she searched about the place for any bits of old wood she thought we could make a camp fire with.
The ‘plan’ was to leave sometime between 3pm and 4pm. However, Paul’s teenage daughter LinLin had last minute cheer-leading practice that afternoon so we didn’t get going until nearly 4.30pm. But the drive out was far quicker and easier than we’d anticipated; not a pot hole in sight. In fact, for some of the way we were on possibly the best highway in Bahrain.
Wendy looked at me and said: “You know what, I feel like we’re actually going somewhere, this road makes me feel like we’re back in Aus”. I had to agree.
We got from Saar to Durrat in under an hour and the sight which greeted us was impressive. What a massive endeavour! Yes it’s a great big construction site right now but you don’t need a lot of imagination to see it’s going to be something special.
Unfortunately, because we’d arrived so late we were not able to drive onto the islands (you have to get there before 3.30pm apparently) but I was struck by the fact that the water and the sky seemed far bluer than anywhere else in Bahrain.
I hope there’s going to be a public beach one day. I, for one, would happily make the drive.
Anyway, by now it was sunset and we were not even close to finding a camping spot. By the time we did all agree on a place, it was dark.
And what a joke we were as a group. We wanted to be out of the breeze so we decided to ‘camp’ at the bottom of a little hill, not realising that the moon was rising on the other side and that we were in a very black shadow.
The wind whipped round our little hill seemingly coming from every direction, putting out each and every candle we tried to light. Somehow, we did manage to light the BBQ and then tried to unpack the food and lay it all out on some picnic blankets.
My daughter Hannah decided she didn’t like sand in her sandals (is that why they’re called sandals?) and so refused to walk anywhere but on the blankets … and so doing, spread sand all over the food containers.
It didn’t much matter though because it was so dark we couldn’t see what we were eating.
Eventually, we realised that the only way we would be able to see what we were doing was to light the campfire.
So, many paper-napkins, bits of old wood and lots of fire-lighter later we had it alight – for a while anyway. But then LinLin saw that we were surrounded by dried camel poo and kinda lost her appetite.
Wendy did her best to keep us ‘cheery’ and Paul’s wife Lenny thankfully took over BBQ duty and turned out the most delicious sausages, kebabs and chops.
They were especially delicious because I think that we all had our doubts that the diddy little BBQ we were using could possibly work.
Once we were fed, we began to chill out and enjoyed being under the stars. Then the fire went out and we were pitched once again into blackness. So we covered it in sand and packed up to go by car-light.
It was so dark it felt like midnight – but was only about 9pm.
As we returned to civilisation I quietly thought about all our ‘mod-cons’ and how much we take everything for granted.
I also decided that now we had a bit of an idea of what we were doing I’d like to try a BBQ in the desert again sometime.
‘Camping Season’ is just beginning so I’m sure I’ll get a chance.
I’m a bit worried though, Wendy said something the other day about buying a tent ...
The good news now (for me) is that my short holiday abroad is back on. So if you’ve been wondering where I’ve been all week I’m in Cyprus. But, I’ll tell you all about that next week.
Krazy Kevin
