A travel vlog by Nate and Kara Buchanan documenting a cruise stop at Sir Bani Yas Island (UAE). They tour the island's large wildlife reserve on a jeep safari, observe animals (giraffes, cheetahs, ostriches, gazelles), hear a guide recount reserve history and stats, and note the engineering used to irrigate the planted trees from the mainland. The video also covers beach time, ship-provided lunch on the island, receiving upgraded key cards for the ship's Yacht Club, and a fancy dinner onboard.
Questions this video answers
17.55 km long (north–south) and 9 km wide (east–west).
10,000 animals.
They bought two giraffes originally; today there are 30 giraffes.
2.5 million trees.
About 9 km from the mainland; a subsea pipeline pumps water from the mainland to irrigate the island.
Chapters
Foreign.
Day on our Middle Eastern cruise. And last night we sailed from Abu Dhabi to this island called Serbani Yas Island. But it's super different than Abu Dhabi.
So according to Wikipedia, Serbani Yas island is the largest natural island in the United Arab emirates. It is 17.55 km long from north to south and 9 km wide from east to west. And it's home to Arabia's largest wildlife reserve. It has things like giraffes, ostriches, deer, cheetahs, hyenas. Not exactly what I expected to be doing when we were coming to the Middle east, but today we're going on a jeep safari. Let's go.
Perfect. I'm glad you. I'm glad you found our channel. See you. Thanks for the ride.
Thank you.
We're here. There's beautiful white sand beaches, beautiful blue waters. Just never pictured the Middle east as like a beach destination. It's beautiful.
Thank you.
So you might be wondering why there's an island in the Middle east with a bunch of wild animals roaming around on it. And we were wondering that too. So yesterday, when we told Nano we were coming, she said that their founder of the UAE really liked animals, and that's why he started this reserve.
And I believe now they're starting to, like, breed the animals here or the animals are breeding themselves and they're introducing them to other nature reserves around the country, which is pretty cool.
Good morning, everybody.
Good morning.
In the beginning, we have only few animals. Today we have 10,000 animals are roaming inside. We bought only two giraffes. Today we have 30. This is one man mission. We have 2.5 million trees are planted here.
Now these animals get hunt by the cheetah because we don't feed the cheetah.
You are lucky to see them.
Yeah, yeah.
Walk faster. Huge. Wow.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, hope you enjoyed the tour.
We are going out.
Thank you very much.
We just finished the Jeep safari tour, and our guide told us that we were extremely lucky to be able to see the cheetah and the giraffe on the same tour. I wish I was a better videographer because I miss capturing the absolute coolest part of the trip. There were two cheetahs chasing a gazelle. Yes. What?
Calm down.
Pull.
I want to go.
It did happen super fast, but I saw the cheetah's tails. They were, like, straight and they were running, and it was the coolest thing ever.
It was really neat. But I think, to me, what was even more impressive than the animals themselves was just, like, the engineering and the effort that it's taken to create this island. There's no natural water on this island, so all of these trees have to be irrigated.
Insane. From the mainland, which is 9km away.
So they've made a pipe that's running underneath the ocean and they're pumping water here from the mainland. Each tree has like a pipe running from tree to tree to tree to tree. It's totally different than like a natural African safari. But like, if you really think about it, this island itself is just truly impressive. Yeah.
And I guess we're gonna go enjoy the beach for a little bit.
I never thought I would be on a beach in the Middle east and be too cold to put my bathing suit on. It's kind of hazy today and the wind's blowing really hard. It's a bit chilly.
Feels nice.
Still nice.
How's my WI fi on this island?
Time for lunch.
MSC has basically brought the entire lunch buffet onto this island. It's pretty impressive. There was nothing here when we got here. Love what they've done with the place.
Alright, good day on the island. But it's a bit chilly, so time for the hot tub.
When we went back to our room to change into our bathing suits, our phone rang and we got some really exciting news. They told us they were giving us new key cards, which doesn't seem like a big deal, but on the first day when we were doing our ship tour, there was a section of the boat that we couldn't access because you had to have a special card to get on that elevator. And this is that special card.
This is the yacht club. It's a section of the boat that only a few people have access to. And we're going to show you around.
If you've ever been on a cruise before, you probably know that at prime times of the day it's kind of hard to find a good seat, especially two together. But you don't have to worry about that. On the 18th floor, there's a private heated pool, an all inclusive bar, an outdoor buffet, tons of tables. And if we venture downstairs and venture further down the golden downstairs, there's a private lounge, another all inclusive bar, another buffet, and a nice place to sit to enjoy food and drinks.
So this is where you can find us for the next week.
And now it's time for dinner and it's fancy night.
Since we are going home after our time here in the Middle east, we were actually able to bring proper clothes this time. So we did not have the proper attire to go to the fancy restaurant tonight, so we're upstairs at the buffet, but it is American night, which apparently means Mexican food and fry. Everything on the buffet could be worse.
Kind of proper, really.
All I did was just add this blue jacket over top of what I normally wear.
My dress really isn't that fancy, and I'm wearing Birkenstocks, but hopefully they'll let us in.
Thank you.
So on the first night of our cruise, we met the restaurant manager, who is this awesome Italian man. And we were telling him how much we love the whole Italy, how much we love the food, and he was like, just wait, I'm going to get the chef to make you something special. And he brought us this delicious Italian style pasta, and he's been doing so every night since. We don't even look at the menu for the main course. He just tells us which pasta the chef's going to make for us the next night. And so tonight he's made us this tomato pasta, which looks delicious. And I'm sure it will be, because all of the pastas that we've had so far have been so good. Noodles are done nice and al dente. This has been a lot of fun, ladies and gentlemen.
The lights all just went away.
Everybody started clapping, and then these people walked in with lights and they're marching in a circle. Everybody's clapping.
