Abu Dhabi - Part 1

by Sim Bradley
09 / 02 / 2010

Last weekend myself and a few others boarded five different planes from all corners of the globe to converge on the dust-filled streets and crystal clear waters of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. We had been invited out by Flash, the organizers of Wakestock Abu Dhabi, which is taking place in a few weeks on March 4-6th, in order to get a taste of the area where the contest would take place, and to capture some promotional images for publicizing the event. Now as you may already know, this town isn’t shy of spending some cash in order to boost tourism, and when they call you wanting to promote wakeboarding in the UAE by paying us to hang out in the sun for a week and shoot some photos, you grab some sunscreen and run to your nearest airport with a beaming smile!
 
In this case the airports included Orlando, JFK, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, Heathrow, Manchester and Sydney, as our group was made up of Dan Nott, Nick Davies, Aaron Rathy and Amber Wing for the riders, and myself, US Alliance editor Garrett Cortese, Alliance UK/WhiteNoSugar videographer Tim Royle and ‘Press Liaison Extraordinaire’ Matt Crowhurst (well that’s the most official title we’ve come up with so far; basically he drove the boat, threw some high-fives and made sure everyone was in the taxi’s on time) for the media crew side of things. This meant on the Sunday we all arrived at various times except for Amber who due to other commitments came a day later in the middle of the night on Monday.
 
So our first day in Abu Dhabi was a relaxed affair whereby we met up with Vinny of Epic Boats and Rudi of Tige Boats, who would be our support crew, boat drivers and guides for the week. The morning started at dawn hoping for some good light, but when we got outside the ocean fog had engulfed the city, which meant you couldn’t see further than 15 meters. Regardless of this we headed to the boats to wait out the dense fog, and as soon as we could see sunlight we got our first glimpse of the Abu Dhabi skyline, and what a sight. The UAE are all about having the biggest of everything, so we rode by the biggest flagpole on the way past the biggest buildings while heading to the biggest mosque to get some photos in the bag. The guys all got warmed up straight away and we got enough riding content for the whole article in that morning alone. Shooting on beautiful turquoise waters with no wind and beaming sunshine and as unique of a background as you can get, makes life as a photographer pretty easy.
 
All in all the first day was your standard magazine trip; we rode in the morning, Garrett threw up all over the beach, ate some lunch at a hotel, Garrett threw up all over the restaurant, filmed some interviews with the riders, Garrett threw up all over the beach, shot some riding in front of the mosque, Garrett threw up over the side of the boat, then headed back to our hotel for dinner, where Garrett threw up all over the bathroom. Unfortunately something at breakfast didn’t agree with G’s stomach, and so his fun-packed day was a little tarnished to say the least. This really did suck, but Garrett was the first to see the funny side in it even though he could barely stand.
 
To make sure we could take care of ourselves throughout the week (an optimistic idea in the first place) Flash had given us each a daily allowance for food, but when you try to explain to Americans the currency is called ‘Dirhams’ they hear something completely different and default to the American understanding of Arabic, which is frankly borderline racist but gave everyone some cheap laughs. So besides the ghost-like figure of Garrett redecorating every spot we visited, and freaking out trying to fathom how expensive a beer was, the first day in town was a great start to the trip.
 
Check back in a few days for Part 2 of the web article series, along with videos too.