Bart Bear's Blog

This little boat is called an Abra. It is a water-taxi that carries people across Dubai Creek. Before Dubai started its huge rebuilding program and built several bridges and a tunnel to take road traffic across the creek, these boats were the main transport between the suburbs of Deira and Bur Dubai. Abras are made of wood and have a small engine. The passengers sit on seats along the middle of the boat, 10 per side, facing outwards. These days the abra traffic is regulated and the docks have specific gates and passenger lanes, but back in the old days it was a case of "every abra for itself" and there were lots of collisions and lots of passengers bumped off into the creek. The oldies went on some of these boats while they were in Dubai and not even Dad fell off, even though he was moving about taking pictures of everything.

Labels: boats, Dubai