Camel rides

Oops. In yesterday's post, I had meant to describe what it's like to ride a camel. I had ridden horses a bit as a kid, but this is quite a different experience.

First off, a camel is much higher. You don't get on by stepping in the stirrup and swinging your legs over. The camel actually kneels down for you. Once you're on, it raises the front and the back at different times, so you feel a bit unsteady as it stands up. Plus, there are no stirrups, so there's no place for you to anchor your feet.

I spent the first couple of minutes holding on for dear life because I was certain that the camel was going to throw me off. After that, though, I realized that I needed to quit thinking of the camel as a horse. It doesn't move the same. Once I stopped trying to ride it like a horse and allowed myself to relax and get used to the camel's movement, it was fine. In fact, by the end, we were trotting across the sand. (I don't know if you're supposed to use the word "trotting" to describe a camel, but that's the closest word I have.) It turned out to be a lot of fun despite my intial certainty that I was going to die.