LAURAnce of aROBia: Al-Hofuf

When my parents were here visiting, we took a trip to Al-Hofuf, which is about an hour south of our home in Al-Khobar. Hofuf is in the Al-Ahsa Oasis, the largest oasis in the world, and a famous area for date production. It is also known for large camel markets, which was one of the goals of our trip.

Rob was gone in Bali, and I couldn't find anyone else who had a large enough car that was around that weekend, so we booked a taxi. I requested a driver who spoke good English and actually could find his way to Hofuf. Luckily, our driver could do both. In fact, he acted like our tour guide, which we needed!

We first arrived at a camel farm/market, where there was one man working and visitors stopped by to buy camels. Our driver, Ali, made sure it was okay for us to look at the camels and even pet them. The camels were ridiculously friendly! They just wanted to touch us and lean on us, which was really awkward. Two camels would come on either side of us and just squeeze, in a very loving way.

Grandpa trying to keep the camels from cuddling too much

Surrounded by loving camels

Grandma and her new friends

Kissed by a camel

After a bit of camel cuddling, we drove to another farm. Ali was set on getting us fresh camel milk and at the first farm, the camels had already been milked that morning. At this farm, there were lots of goats with strange long tails. (When we got home, we googled this and found that only sheep have long tails, not goats...these poor guys either had their English words mixed up or actually thought they were raising goats when they are really sheep!)

At this farm, a man and his teenage son lived there and worked the farm. All the farms are owned by Saudis but managed/worked by men from other Middle Eastern or African countries. I believe this family was from Yemen, but I'm not sure. While we waited for milk, which we kept saying we didn't need (but didn't want to be rude), we were invited to sit inside the house. The house is shown in the background of the picture below. It consisted of two open rooms with carpets as the flooring on top of the sand. One had an open fire pan where they cooked flat bread, and the other had mattresses on the floor. We opted to sit outside on a rug, and eventually were brought both goat (sheep?) milk and camel milk to taste. The goat milk was sweet and creamy, and the camel milk was thin and salty. Jack drank half the bowl of goat milk.

The teenage boy brought out a box full of stale, moldy flatbread for us to feed to the camels. He also explained, through our driver/translator, that some of the camels were for sale. One female cost 70,000 riyals, which is about $18,000. In town, he said, there are racing camels that go for 150,000 riyals or $40,000!