It's Friday, October 15, and Friday is a non-working day in Saudi Arabia. It was a surprise that the area around Elephant Rock was closed because it was Friday and that we couldn't get closer. It's a big rock, so we were able to see it. This slight set back actually turned out well because we noticed "The Bottle", a hole in the rocks across from the elephant that we could walk to - a short hike in the 42 degree heat (once again, middle of the day).
Up we went and saw a skeleton of a goat. It was not nice to see that the legs of the skeleton appeared to be tethered. Under the heading of "fools names and fools faces often appear in public places", someone further defaced the rocks with our names and a bunny. The view of Elephant rock was even better from the hight of our hike.
After the hike we drove up to an overlook which was at the top of a mesa, a very steep drive. There were wild camels at the top. We got a good view of the date farms through the valley and the old town of Al Ula and its fort at the top of the hill.
Lunch was at The Pink Camel which was a little bit of California in the middle of Saudi Arabia. It was wonderful and we had lemon/mint coolers, soup, ravioli, and avocado toast. We met some people working on art transportation and they shared how much the area is growing and preparing for tourists.
We had a few hours off back at the hotel and had a mediocre Arabic coffee on carpeted couches with a nice view of the hotel's valley before going for star gazing.
The star gazing experience flirted with disaster from the beginning. There was quite a big moon, which meant the stars wouldn't be particularly visible. The driver insisted that we were to be picked up at one place which was wrong and we were lucky to get to the right place on time. During the pre-briefing there were young people who insisted the Apollo moon landing never happened. The trip to the star gazing place was over an hour and the other passenger was from Kuwait. We had a difference of opinion as to the advantages of Kuwait. There were about 20 people participating and some were asking questions, or requested clarifications, that were not adding value. Others were walking around with their phone lights on which hurt night vision. Dinner was a bit of a disaster - no hand sanitizer, no light to see what was available, bread was difficult to serve and we sat on the carpeted area which made it a bit difficult to eat.
The height of the evening, if you will, was when the 2 young women referred to above (who didn't believe in the moon landing) decided they would just move into our seats for the ride home. An international incident resulted and I am glad no one had rockets. It set back East/West relations several years. Turns out these two young women were also at our hotel. Luckily we didn't see them again and we probably won't go back for a repeat of the star gazing experience.
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