The Traveling Heisters: October 2012

I totally forgot to post some pictures from when we went to the damn in Riyadh, Wadi Hanifa. It was very interesting to see running water in the desert...even though this was NOT fresh water. We went with some friends from school and had another fantastic time. We went on Saudi National Day and the locals were in great spirits! Although I was not able to take a picture of it happening, we were treated to one local "friend" climbing a date palm to retrieve some dates for us to taste. They weren't quite ready to eat, but we tried them anyway.

The water trail goes for over 75 km straight through Riyadh and then some. We did not travel the whole distance of the flow, but we did go several kilometers along the banks to get some really cool pictures and experiences. Some of the locals were fishing and had some bread that they offered to the kids to throw into the water to attract some fish. Surprisingly enough this body of water holds some fairly large fish. Not exactly sure what species they are but they looked on the lines of a catfish, but I could be wrong. I would NOT recommend eating anything that comes out of this water as it is not the cleanest of water sources, but it would be a great place for catch & release. That being said, I am not sure what the local law enforcement agency would think about us fishing there so we probably will not be the first to try. HA!

Along the water way, there were several roads, villages, towns, and further up and down were date farms. We didn't go to any of the date farms yet but they are definitely on the list of places to see while we are here in the Kingdom. If you can get past the uncleanliness of the water and the fact that the locals do not use the trash receptacles very much, the Wadi Hanifa Damn and water way is a very interesting place to visit and get some really great pictures.

We found the Camel Souq and farm today...WOW! It was truly amazing to see how many types, sizes and colors of camels exist in Saudi Arabia. We (Billie Jo) found this wonderland of camels online from another that was previously in Riyadh. It sounded unreal and we thought it would truly be something the boys would be into. I mean what pre-teenage boy wouldn't like to see thousands of camels?! It was definitely an experience. We read that the locals take pride in their camels and we were definitely shown that today.

When we pulled up to the outskirts of the farm, we were greeted by several locals that were feeding their stock. They were extremely friendly and seemed very happy that we were taking such interest in their camels. Then another local drove up and struck up some conversation with us and offered us to come see his camels so we got in our car and followed him about 1/4 mile down to his camel pen. There we were treated to our first camel rides!!!! It was very cool! The very kind man asked us if we would like to take a ride and we obviously could not be rude and turn his generosity down. So, we each took a turn riding his camel. You don't realize how tall a camel is until you have sat on the back of one and they stand up...very quickly for such a large animal I might add. A truly memorable experience. Sadly we were not able to have a very long conversation with this nice man as his English was limited and our Arabic is zero at this point.

After we left our new friend, we got back in our car and traveled a little farther down the path to see the sights. This is were we found two camels that will always stay in our minds. The first, Sam's new friend, was a young all white female camel. This camel fell in love with Sam and I believe the feelings were mutual. She didn't mind if anyone else scratched or pet or touched her, but she definitely was fond of Sam. If Sam moved, she moved. If Sam stood still, she stood still. Needless to say, it was hard to get Sam away from his new friend. The only thing that did it was a beast of a camel next to our new friendly camel. This new camel had to be the largest camel that we saw all day, and we must have seen literally thousands of camels. The best word I can use to describe this beast is...dinosauresque. Books and movies do not do the camel any justice. They are very a intelligent, very social, very inquisitive animal. We did not witness any of the bad nature typically displayed on television.

After our camel experiences, we traveled down the highway to the King Khled Wildlife Center. In truth, we didn't see any wildlife, not that we really expected to see any, but we got to see some amazing sights. That and we found a skeleton of what we think was a camel!

In all, today was a very educational day for the Heister's. We found new friends in the human world and in the animal world. We are convinced more and more every day that the CNN effect back home is terrible for knowing the real people of Saudi Arabia. Today we were invited in to the lives of some locals (Saudi and Yemen) that we could barely communicate with and were treated like old friends.