Thursday, January 29th.
We left the National Park Hotel in Al Bahah by 8:30 and spent most of the day in the bus. We drove down the mountain again along that switchbacked road, passing Thee Ain at the bottom. Then the terrain changed from hilly, to a few large sand dunes, to scrub bush land, and then barren dry sandy desert, all within an hour. We passed a few herds of goats and a few camels and a few small camps, but mostly empty land. We stopped at a large gas station. These are like oases for modern people. In addition to fuel, they provide a mosque for the traveling faithful and a place to relieve ourselves as the mosques always provide toilets. This one also had a large strip plaza attached where we could shop for a few supplies. I picked up a frozen Snickers ice cream cone and when I got to the checkout a Saudi soldier in uniform who was just paying for his purchase picked it up and paid for it for me. How nice is that? After that we continued towards Jeddah and saw many people and machines working on constructing a large above ground water pipeline that went on for miles. This will provide desalinated water to Jeddah. As we entered Jeddah Yannis showed us an aerial view of the city that showed several large areas of what used to be old neighbourhoods where the people were forcibly removed and relocated in order to build new projects for the increased tourism expected for the 2030 World’s Fair and the 2034 World Cup. The map he showed us still showed the labyrinth of streets of those neighbourhoods ghosted out.
When we finally arrived at our last hotel, we were given some free time with Yannis providing a few options of what to do. Brad and Margaret had been to see an exhibit called TeamLab in Japan and knew there was one here so Wendy, Marg’s friend, and I decided to go with them. We took an Uber to the site near the old town. The exhibit was housed in a large building in a beautiful area. It is hard to explain what TeamLab is but I’ve posted the description in a photo. Basically it is immersive, interactive, digital, art projected onto mirrors on walls, ceilings and floors. There are about twenty different exhibits on two floors. Some areas are just places to observe what is happening and others allow you to engage with the exhibit, by trying to hop on a circle as it travels over a trampoline, on using a series of trapeze swings to navigate your way across a room, etc. Amazing place and well worth it. We stayed for three hours. Then came the fun. Brad organized another Uber using the instructions from a helpful employee at TeamLab. After driving for twenty minutes it was obvious we were going wrong but we didn’t try to stop the driver, who had limited English. When we eventually stopped we explained to him that he had brought us to the wrong Corniche area (apparently there are three of four) and now as it was late we would like to go back to the hotel. That was another half hour return trip. Unfortunate as we missed our dinner but fun in a way. Back to the hotel by 10:15 and off to the room for the night.
