This time, I was better prepared for the day trip to Al Ain and my wife downloaded the route map on her smartphone.
To ensure that we do not get lost on the desert highway my wife also decided to practice her backseat driving, from the front passenger seat.
“Let me put on the voice function,” she said, as we hit Shaikh Zayed Road early afternoon. The disembodied, computerised voice from the smartphone asked me to turn off to Emirates Hills after driving for a few metres.
“It’s confused,” I explained to my wife who told me with controlled hysteria to take the flyover. “It will be crowded in there. Everyone knows you have to take Dubai-Al Ain Road,” I said confidently, as we zipped on.
After a few minutes of silence, my wife told me that we were heading to Oman instead of Al Ain. “What’s the point of having a GPS when you don’t listen to it?” she said in an exasperated tone. She was right; we were on E44 somehow, instead of E66.
“How long does this trip last?” asked my son from the backseat, apparently bored with playing video games on his console.
Meanwhile, the voice was recalibrating the route and was patiently telling me to take a side road that would take me back to the point where it wanted me to go in the first place.
There should be some way to make a computerised voice sound cheerful, I told myself, like the voice alarm in James Bond movies. As all hell breaks loose and everyone is in panic to get out of the facility, I like the way the voice sensuously saying on the loudspeakers: “It is now T minus 30”.
I could not understand the phone’s accent most of the time as it tried to pronounce the names of the streets in Al Ain. By the time we reached Jebel Hafeet, it was getting windy and the mountain air was crisper, so we decided to do the climb first and visit the zoo later.
The road to the top of UAE’s highest peak (1,240 metres) is said to be one of the best in the world. It snakes around the rugged mountains and it would have been fun had I been driving a sports car alone. “Watch out for avalanche,” said my wife and that woke up everyone: “What?” we all shouted. “I am reading the sign,” my wife shouted back.
When we were checking out Jebel Hafeet online, an Abu Dhabi website playfully suggested that we could cycle up to the top if we have the stamina. I have heard of cyclists who do just that and hats off to them.
As we climbed, there were signs that said writing was prohibitive and I joked to my sons that I was not allowed to write. But when we reached the top, we realised what it meant as there was ugly graffiti everywhere on the craggy hillside.
It was amazing to know that calcified coral was found there, which meant that the mountain was once covered by the sea.
By the time we came down and dipped our feet in the piping hot, salty water in the springs at the foothills of the mountain, it was getting dark.
At the zoo, the animals had gone to sleep and we tiptoed around, staring in awe at the yawning white lion. A patch of pink in the water made us go closer to see what it was and found a crowd of pelicans huddling.
On our return trip, the GPS loved the many roundabouts in Al Ain and after a while said, “Now drive straight for 93km,” and went to sleep.
