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Porsche faces life
Jade has a brand new Porsche Cayman, not practical for two passengers and luggage, so it is swapped temporarily with her friend’s Mercedez Battletruck, something as square as and only marginally smaller than a Hummer. There’s no oil crisis in the Middle East, global warming a western conspiracy. “You can drive, I hate this thing,” Jade says as we prepare to leave Dubai for Abu Dhabi.
Sheik Zayed Road is six lanes wide each side and the driving on the right hand side of the road. The speed limit is 140kph, but only enforced at 160kph, so this is like a race track and our average 130 kph leaves us in the wake of an array of Lexus, BMWs and Mercedez, some of which must easily top 200 kph. There is no need to worry about speed camera fines if your veins pump oil.
We are mindful about blood money, the price to pay to the families of any Arab you may accidentally kill on the road. Avoid men in dish-dash and women in Arabic dress, and small children particularly, as blood money is around 200,000 dirham, more than $NZ100,000. The risk-factor is much higher here; Abu Dhabi is very much an Arabic city whereas only about 8 percent of the Dubai population is local.
Rule number one at roundabouts, Jade tells us, is that there are no rules. Just close your eyes, put your foot down and hope for the best. This useful advice comes just before a huge roundabout between her villa and the local supermarket where, it seems, half of the Dubai population has come to do the weekly shopping. We don’t know what the right hand rule is either, and parking and driving protocols are non-existent in the supermarket carpark. Only once does instinct draw me to drive in the left hand side of the road. The prospect of paying blood money a good reminder that when in the Middle East, drive as the locals do.