Kayaking the mangroves.

“Hold the paddle like this. It will all come naturally.”

If you live in the UAE and are interested in the outdoors, for the most part, you’re out of luck. Fortunately, there’s Noukhada Adventure Company. Noukhada offers a variety of adventures from biking to sailing, but they are most popular for kayaking trips in the mangroves. The employees and guides are fun and friendly and clearly enjoy their job.

Realizing it had been far too long since my last trip (October 2009), I set up a tour for this past weekend. (For those living in UAE, there’s a coupon in the Abu Dhabi Entertainment Book making the trip only 150AED for two!)

Six of us set out in three double kayaks, plus our guide and a non-swimming businessman. Like before, the water was calm making the paddling pretty easy (unless you’re the businessman, he had to be towed…the entire two hours). We were glad to have a 7:30am start considering the sun was already heating up.

We stopped for a little swim break.

Mike made friends and then enemies with a little blue crab who took a snap at him.

At one point the waterway gets quite small. Hopefully I didn’t do too much damage to the mangroves smacking my paddle at them.

Unfortunately, a lot has changed since my first kayak trip in the mangroves. Back then, a resort was scheduled to be built. Now, it’s about halfway complete. It’s so sad to see a once protected area developed. But don’t worry, they are naming the resort after the mangroves so it’s pretty much the same thing.

And did you know that mangroves are like mini desalination plants? They are also the habitat for many fish and crab species. Abu Dhabi has a plan to protect the mangroves, but we’ll see.

xo, jill