Yesterday morning, we bicycled by several male giraffes -- very slowly. I shudder to think what we would have done if they'd startled. A few minutes later (before some "technical" mountain biking that unseated both of us) we paused, breathless, twenty feet away from a napping cheetah. No fence between us. And then a field of running oryx. A leaping Indian gazelle crossed our path. She was stunning.
We went to
Sir Bani Yas Island last weekend for an adventure - not our usual sort of adventure, since we rarely visit parks stuffed with dubiously assorted exotic animals. But an adventure we got.
Sir Bani Yas, about a three hour drive from Abu Dhabi, used to be connected to the mainland, and is now divided from the Emirate by a thin stretch of shallow water. It's covered in volcanic rock and barren sand formations -- a bit inhospitable, it would seem, but it's been settled for quite some time. On one end of the island, there are ruins of a Christian monastery from 600 AD under excavation.
Now the island is part of the UAE greening project, which pumps a mind-boggling amount of desalinated water all over the emirate. Most of Sir Bani Yas is irrigated, and trees (including orange, olive, and date palm, which grow produce served in the hotel's restaurants) grow in neat rows. There is even a faux savannah area, where the grass grows in long tufts.
The hotel is in between the ocean, and a large, shallow pond dotted with mangroves, and (much to Nick's delight) flamingos.
Apparently the lesser flamingo (the sort at Bani Yas) get pink in proportion to the amount of shrimp they eat! Ours looked pretty happy.
Sand gazelle and mountain gazelle roam the island. (As does the
hydrex, closest living relative of the elephant, and eerily similar to the Ewok. We spotted trees full of them on our morning runs, but have no pictures to prove it.)
We interrupted a huge herd of sand gazelles peacefully munching on our first morning run.
Peacocks also run around, making noises that reminded us uncomfortably of the cheetahs we'd read about.
We would see the cheetahs in good time. In the interior of the island lies a huge, fenced park, where five cheetahs live, along with many herds of sand gazelle and other tasty cheetah-treats.
On our first morning, we went for a drive through the park in almost comical safari vans.
We forgot about how silly we felt in the van when we arrived at a large area where sand gazelle, Indian bucks with funny, twisty horns, oryx, and various birds (Egyptian geese, African crowned crane, more peacocks).
We saw a male ostrich strutting....
...another one motionless, all by himself, in the middle of the desert...
...a crazy looking bird called a crowned crane...
...and giraffes fighting, swinging their necks at each other.
And oryx, which used to be all but extinct in the wild. Breeding programs in the UAE have restored the oryx population significantly. (Our guide who brought us so close to the sleeping cheetah said he was more afraid of oryx than anything else in the park - apparently they are pretty grumpy.)
Very importantly, we saw a breed of Moroccan sheep that we think might do very well in in St. Meinrad. These guys can stand up to fight, and to eat leaves from the trees.
On our way back, baby reef sharks were playing in the shallows. They were quite visible (and terrifyingly many!) when we took this picture - you can pick out three at the bottom right.
It was lovely exploring the island.
As usual in Abu Dhabi, we were confronted by a peculiar mix of good intentions, curious result, and massive expenditure. The irrigation alone must have stunning logistics...and cost...behind it. Animals don't all belong together, and they aren't all from the Arabian peninsula. Some are gifts from other nations (we wish someone would give the park some camels!), brought in by helicopter or military plane. (Transporting a giraffe somewhere is incredibly hard, apparently, because they have such high blood pressure that putting their heads down is quite risky.) As usual, we find these antics comical, endearing, and eyebrow-raising all at once.
But we enjoyed the rocks, the beach, and the sunset with unadulterated pleasure.
After the race, we went a few miles north to Dhayah Fort, which was built in the 16th century. It was an important part of the emirate's defense, but was partially destroyed by the British in the 1800s and only recently renovated. 
We saw cows lazing by the side of the road, and goats crossing when the mood struck them (like Berkeley pedestrians!).
