March of the Camels

When we left for Egypt, we told the boys we were going to do two things – see the pyramids and ride a camel. The first was amazing. The second? Not so much (although I can now cross it off the list).

When we booked this excursion, we did so as a bit of an experiment with the travel agent to see how legit he was. He was cheaper than some of the other places we looked at, and the trips all sounded the same, so we figured we’d give him a try. But before booking some of our other excursions, we wanted to use this as a test case.

The itinerary called for transportation by Jeep to an area called the Blue Hole, where we would stop for a bit of snorkeling, then switch to camels for a ninety minute trek along the coast to Ras Abu Gallum (a protected area up the coast from Dahab). There we get lunch, snorkel some more, and then do the trip in reverse.

As promised, at 8am this morning, our jeep was waiting at the front of the hotel (a good sign). Unfortunately, it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind (a bad thing), and looked more like a retired army jeep with the seats being two benches running the length of the vehicle and set up high above the wheels. It also had a low roof, so before even moving my head was already jammed into the canvas.

Around 30 minutes later, and with my spine slightly compressed, we arrived at the Blue Hole. This is a fairly famous dive site in Egypt, so for being a bit out of the way, there are lots of restaurants and convenience stores, presumably to serve the divers during breaks between dives and at the end of the day. We are amongst the first to arrive in the morning though, so we have the place mostly to ourselves.

Most dives in Dahab are done from the shore rather than jumping off a boat, so Ang is a little less excited about them. Given that, so far we have opted to just snorkel, and with the water as clear as it is here, I’m not sure that we’re missing that much. We spend about an hour circling and checking out coral and a variety of fish before heading back to shore. For how hot it is outside, the water is surprisingly cold (not Seattle cold, but definitely wet suit cold if you were staying in the water for any length of time), and we are ready to move on.

Now begins the real adventure, as neither of us has really ever been close to a camel much less ridden one. We did ride elephants in Asia, but those were fairly short trips sitting on a padded bench rather than an hour plus in what turns out to be a very uncomfortable saddle.

You board a camel when it is laying on the ground, and that part we handle like pros. It then gets up by first straightening it back legs (pitching you sharply forward) and then its front legs. I imagine we wouldn’t be the first people to roll frontwards out of the saddle during this process, but we both hang on and are soon ready to go.

The first thing I notice is that the back of a camel is really high, and that the ground below us is mostly rock and looks very hard. I keep both of these things firmly in mind as my ship of the desert starts off in the direction of our guide (a boy that looks about ten and is doing the trip on foot in a pair of knock off Crocs).

It doesn’t take too long for us both to realize that 15 minutes on a camel is probably enough and would still let us say we did it. The saddle is rock hard under my butt, and the two wooden pommels (one in front and one in back) serve only to dig into my back when we are going uphill and mash my pills when we are going down. It seems that camels sneeze a lot, so being downwind of that every five or ten minutes and catching the blowback is a special touch. The good news is that there are only seventy-five minutes left.

The trip wasn’t all bad, and after a while we start to get the hang of it, mimicking the locals we see from time to time by shifting a little more sideways in the saddle and putting a leg up crossways over the camel’s neck. Soon, there is a bit of rhythm to the whole thing, and without the noise of people or cars, the mountains on one side and the ocean on the other, its all very peaceful.

At Ras Abu Gallum, there is a small Bedouin camp where the more adventurous sorts (or the backpacking hippies depending on who you are asking) pitch tents and camp out for days at a time. I imagine it is a fairly tourist flavored version of an authentic Bedouin camp (in part, since it has its own supermarket), but since we’re not going out into the desert in search of the real thing, we’re perfectly happy with this one.

We have about three hours there before it is time to head back. After a bit of tea they serve as a welcome (it felt hot enough to have killed the worst of the nasties that may have been in the water), we spent the first hour snorkeling along the reef. While there weren’t as many fish as we saw in the morning, the coral formations were just stunning. We’re not dive nuts, but we have gone quite a few places, and neither of us can remember seeing anything like this. The cool water eventually chases us back to dry land, but the underwater experience here is something we won’t ever forget.

The rest of the time we spend with a great lunch, and for me at least, a good beach snooze. It’s then back up on the camel for the return trip. The way back seems longer, probably because my butt is a whole lot sorer, and because in my haste to leave the hotel, I didn’t get sunscreen on the tops of my feet, which are now burned and rubbing against the straps of my sandals. We finally make it back to our jeep, and I am pretty happy to have my feet planted firmly on the ground.

We make it back to the hotel around 5pm, and make some half-hearted rumblings about taking the shuttle into town for dinner. Ultimately, we break out a few packs of noodle soup and are perfectly content spending the rest of the evening in the hotel.