Dithering in the Desert

 

Well after a fairly action-packed first few days here we hit Friday, and with it a full stop. Friday is the equivalent of Sunday and nothing is allowed to be done on a Sunday. Indeed the praying frequency is increased throughout the day and no-one is allowed to work – not even foreigners who are already pushed for time with rising temperatures…

Camels casually wandering along next to the road	This guy was at camp about 30m from my room. Very unfazed by us

But “rules is rules”, so we had a bit of a lie-in and then took a drive to inspect a potential fuel cache that we could operate one of the helicopters from to reduce the wasted ferry time to the survey area.

Very box-like homes – presumably to defend against the heat	The ubiquitous mosque

The trip seemed about an hour’s drive along a very decent dirt road (with so little rain the dirt roads are as good as they are in the Karoo) but the driver was so terrified of getting a puncture (and obviously having to change a tyre, as that would be strenuous work) that he drove at 30kph the whole way!! It was painful. We took almost the whole day to drive to the fuel cache, check it out and then drive all the way back.

A section of a small desert village	Many homes like this, walled in and on top of hills – can’t just be rich people

Along the way we drove through a number of small, isolated towns – very small and basic. I took a few pics of the kind of architecture, and the types of homes typical in this area. Naturally no town is complete without it’s mosque. All petrol stations around here seem to be decorated with mosaics or larger tiles and look much more interesting than the plain, branded garages we’re used to. Above each pump is a fire extinguisher bottle containing dry powder. I haven’t noticed fire extinguishers in garages back home but assume they must be around.

Basic desert fuel station	A slightly larger town on the way to Bisha

At the cache there was a small “Bedouin” farm/camp which we drove to to ask permission to operate the helicopter from there. The driver got out, only saw a woman, so got back in the car to leave. He insisted he couldn’t speak with a woman and would only speak to a man. We had to convince him to ask the woman if there was a man with whom he could speak. Sheesh! The woman sent her son out (couldn’t have been older than 17) for the “man chat” which lasted all of 2 minutes.

Small farm or camp near fuel cache	The main “house”. Persian rugs under the tent on the right

This was taken at speed – a dead dog hung from a tree – a warning to other dogs to leave the goats alone?

One perk of the trip and being crammed in the back seat of a double-cab was that we drove back to camp via Bisha – the nearest town that I flew into on arrival. The streets were completely deserted, but we drove to a Pizza Hut and waited until 1pm when it was due to open. At 1:05 the streets were busy with cars again, like any normal working town. It was crazy to see a change from ghost town to bustling commercial zone in 5 minutes!

Ghost-like at 12:50pm	Store fronts all shut
A Centrepoint shopping mall with chains around all the doors	Strange working hours…

Filled with massive pizzas we headed back to camp. I walked into my room, opened the door to the shared bathroom and was presented with water all over the walls and floor. The guy I’m sharing with had clearly used the water spray head to, er, do his thing and must have decided to take a shower with it while he was there. I only said that in a previous message as a joke – I didn’t think it would be a likely event! I’ve been showering in flip-flops since I arrived, now I won’t even pee without shoes on!

Sand Boogers

 

The mine is called Al Hajar and is owned by Ma’aden (which means “minerals”) – a mining company run by the government.

The camp containers	Mine is the door just after the sign on the fence

The camp is very weather-beaten. Many large satellite dishes lie around in various stages of corrosion. I think they are most likely TV dishes, but there are a number of internet dishes too. A basketball court, a tennis court and a volleyball court are at the top of the camp, although in this sun none of them are used. The camp is actually fairly empty although surprisingly, finding accommodation was tough. They didn’t have a room for me when I arrived, so as much as I wanted to collapse and sleep somewhere I had to stay awake while they hunted for a room. Eventually they showed me to a room with a local’s stuff scattered all over the place. Most of his clothes they took out, but I’m not sure when said individual is expected back, so I lock my door at night, lest I relive the moment where, in a hostel in Napoli, Italy, some drunk guy tried to climb into my bed with me, giving both of us a bloody big fright! Most of the accommodation containers have a room on either side with a shared bathroom in the centre. I don’t think I have a neighbour at the moment, so the bathroom’s all mine!

Proper paint weathering – quite a cool texture?	Sunset. And with it the temperature drops…

The canteen is great – the food seems quite good (if you like chicken – that’s pretty much all they do), there is fruit, bread, omelette at breakfast etc., although one eats directly off the steel trays which is preparing me for any jail time I may have in my future…

“…but you’ll still need a tray”	My baby, sunrise on day 1

It is incredibly cold at night here. I was warned, thankfully, as I had already laid out my t-shirts and shorts and wasn’t even going to take a jacket as the last few places I have been its been 25°C at night and the jacket just wasted space in my bag. Its actually quite enjoyable having a cool environment for a change. This first morning I got up at 5am in the pitch dark and with a cold wind blowing, pulled on a fleece, hat and gloves to walk out to the chopper. However, as soon as the sun peeps over the hills the temperature starts to climb and by 10am its around 24°C. Thankfully not at all sweltering, but we are 5500feet above sea level after all. The dryness is serious, however. Its incredibly dusty and boogers get scratchy, so I’ve been sneezing up a storm! Hopefully in a few days my nose will get used to both and I’ll be ok. (Yes, I am drinking lots of water, Mom/Cath!)

Sand rivers and sharp rocks	The mine

Fridays are religious days here (equivalent of Sunday) and no-one is allowed to work, including whities in the desert. So tomorrow we will be sitting around looking for something to do. I know these guys are quite fanatical about their beliefs etc., but was surprised to hear that the crew were informed before I arrived that they were not permitted to pee on the ground as it was an insult to the Saudis. Needless to say when at the helicopter, about 1km walk from camp, one has to find a very big bush to “inspect for snakes and scorpions” to ensure one isn’t spotted laying 500ml of disrespect on their holy ground.

My room at the red dot – if you look very very closely you can see 2 helis to the right above the camp	They are reworking the original mine waste from the pit

That’s all for now. I have been handed the third and most recent helicopter to arrive, and spent today doing systems flights with it before it begins production. As a result I got my operator to take pics of the camp and surrounds as we bombed around checking the radar altimeter for accuracy.

Saudi Arabia - Bucket and Spade Country!

 

So, a short but very pleasant week in Durban after Ivory Coast and again I’m off to lands afar – this time its Saudi Arabia. The trip started off fantastically from JHB in that I marched myself off to the Slow Lounge – an airport lounge for, amongst others, holders of a Platinum FNB bank card. How special I felt. As it was my first time in an airport lounge (never been a Business Class celebrity, let alone First Class) I behaved like a small child. I was greeted almost immediately by a waiter who gave me the guided tour of the whole lounge once I mentioned it was my first time. I was quite impressed with how smart, clean and large it was. And being fairly late in the evening, almost completely empty. There are showers, different types of couch-like chairs, private sleep rooms with their own TVs, and free food and drink. I may have made a small pig of myself…

Slow Lounge	Bathroom with shower

Flight out was on Etihad which, while long and exhausting, was a comfortable flight. It seems many Aussies and Chinese fly home from SA via Abu Dhabi, and the Chinese being as populous as they are, dominated the plane. So I was very grateful that I was sat next to a young blonde female student who neither talked incessantly, nor snored while I was trying to sleep. Not too shabby!

Om nom nom. Starting with desert first…

The flight took an hour longer than expected (8.5 hours) following a massive backlog of inbound flights due to fog at Abu Dhabi airport. We sat in the hold for the entire hour (I timed him – his holding pattern accuracy was good) and I counted at least 7 of us all holding in the same place at different altitudes, although one other aircraft was on the same level as us, more or less on the opposite side of the hold. We turned on top of another aircraft that must have been only 2000’ below us so that I could read the “Etihad” lettering on the body clearly.

A painful 6 hour stop in Abu Dhabi before boarding the flight to Jeddah. However as big and, I’m sure, impressive as Abu Dhabi and its airport must be, there were fewer shops to wander through than JHB International and all much smaller and with rip-off prices much like every other “duty free” store I’ve ever walked through.

Abu Dhabi international concourse – one big circle of very little

I stand corrected. I typed all of the above during my 6 hour layover, and when I actually left the central concourse above to walk to my departure gate it took me nearly 20mins and I passed through a number of smaller shopping zones. Certainly the one above is the main one, but it was by no means the only.

The flight to Jeddah was filled almost entirely with Indians. They were all wearing white robes (really just a thin blanket over their shoulders) and with the lugging of baggage etc. most of the robes were falling off revealing that they were topless underneath. Sadly this was just the men – the women were in Saris which weren’t at all open. But it was a strange sight to board the plane and see rows of half naked men – like a charter flight to a nudist retreat. But they were the worst passengers I’ve ever seen (and I’ve flown with Russians heading home from oil rig work). They couldn’t speak English, so ignored every single instruction from the cabin crew. When they initially boarded they immediately chose their own seats, delaying the flight while the cabin crew had to sort it all out and move them around. As we were lining up on the runway to take off an old lady got up and started wandering down the aisle. Same story on landing. They just did everything they were asked not to do and had to eventually be shouted at like school kids – I felt really bad for the poor cabin crew having to work like kindergarten teachers!

Hmm… Not quite as posh as the Slow Lounge – but you can shower with the convenient hand shower while having a pooh – bonus!	The plane was full of Indians – must have been a religious pilgrimage to Jeddah or something

We arrived in Jeddah but the agent wasn’t waiting for me, and with 40 hours with only a couple of hours doze I got very irritable. After standing next to the arrival doors for an hour, texting people in SA and SA (see what I did there…) he finally sauntered up and got crapped on by me. Quickly, however, I realised it would have been safer to have just not said a word. He clearly had severe anger issues (I’m not kidding). His boss phoned him to crap on him for being late (clearly my project manager had had a go at his boss) and he instantly started shouting aggressively back into the phone before hanging up on his boss. They couldn’t find my ticket for my onward flight so decided to take me to a hotel for the night.

That had to be the worst drive I have ever undertaken. I’m honestly not doing a “Cathy Mitchell” and adding exaggerations and embellishments to the magnitude of 5 or 6 times the truth, this guy drove so close to the car in front (at 100kph) that I couldn’t see the car’s number plate! He would start to overtake the car in front on the narrow shoulder, pull up almost level and then hoot rudely because the car hadn’t moved out of his lane to let my guy in. He wedged himself between two cars, straddling the lane marker and did the same. And the traffic was heavy and we never stopped doing 100 for more than a few seconds. At one point someone pulled into our lane in front of him. He chased the other guy, overtook him, cut him off and then slowed down to 40kph, blocking the guy behind. It was unbelievable. He was incredibly rude. The Indian man behind the front desk at the hotel got shouted at loudly for answering the reception phone while he was dealing with us – in other words not giving us his full, continuous attention.

Wow! I was so tired by the time I got to the hotel that I took one of Cathy’s pills that “just relaxes you allowing you to fall asleep”. What a liar Cathy turned out to be. I showered, left completely unintelligible comments on Whatsapp, plugged my phone in to charge and TURNED IT OFF (?!) and don’t remember any of that. If you darted a charging bull with a crushed up pill it would fall asleep before it hit you! So my alarm didn’t go off but thankfully the driver called up to my room at 5am to tell me “you must come now!”, which I did in a frantic dash.

The main drag through Bisha	Road quality on the outskirts of the town
Much better roads once out of town	This reminds me a lot of southern Namibia
Squiggly kilometres to Squiggle	Some very large, isolated homesteads / compounds

Final flight was to Bisha, not unlike Bishu in complexity and size. The photos are once I left Bisha and drove the 1 hour to camp. The camp is a small open-cast gold mine which is busy being decommissioned and slowly taken apart. The same mining company has a number of mines dotted around and is clearly looking for more, using us to map the ground along what I assume is a gold-bearing vein (lode) body. There aren’t any geologists here to question – certainly no English speaking ones, so I can only speculate.

Palm trees seem to be the only planted tree in the country	Between a spike and a hard place…
Very arid and inhospitable