Last week, as part of our week long holiday, we drove over to the east coast of the country to have a look around. From RAK, we took the 18 down to the 87 and then over to the coast.

Along the way, we passed many “round-abouts” a.k.a. “traffic circles”, a geographic feature borrowed from the British. In Oman and the UAE, many of these circles are adorned with giant pots, urns, sharks, dolphins, lanterns, clocks and other local objects and animals. In lieu of street names in many places, these giant objects serve as great landmarks.

This mosque is conveniently located next to the Tower Round-about.

The dolphin and seven of his friends splash around what we call the Dolphin Round-about.

The UAE is famous for its pottery and out in the country-side, pottery shops abound. Some might call this the Pottery Round-about, but I thought we should call it the Urn Round-about.

Finally, if you were thinking of walking on the grass, these sharks should set you straight.

Signs like this help us to practice reading Arabic and they also tell us how far we have to go to get where we are going. Today, we are heading for Khour Fakan, or Fakan Creek, a port town and soon to be home of the world’s largest oil tanker loading facility.

As we head down the coast, the mountains follow close behind leaving only a small strip of land for farming.

As we drove through rather lush forests of date palms and citrus fruit, we wondered where the water came from to supply the farms. This dam attests to the rainfall they get around here.

Further along we explored a wadi that empties into this dam.

You can get a sense of the volume of water that flows through here.

At Khour Fakan, the beach is lined with some of the only coconut palm trees in the UAE. You can see that we are about to get some rain. Not very exciting until you recall that we are in the desert.

This heron kept us company as we walked the beach.