Madi - Camel Rides

As you people may know, I am scared of all animals big and small. So when our family decided to ride camels on the beach I freaked out a little. Our car pulled up in front of the camels on the side of the road. There was a beach in view, but the camel ride was really on the side of the road. There were blankets on the camels humps, all checkered and ready to be ridden. We were with our grandparents, and I think Grandma was as scared as I was.

A stranger, the owner of the camels, propped me up on the kneeling camel’s hump. The camel was about to get up. It tilted forward as his back legs arose. Then his front legs straightened and I looked down and saw how far it was down. It would not be fun to fall off this thing.

Once I was up, the rest of process was pretty easy. The camel did all the work. Strangely, we had to cross a road. All the cars stopped, because they would have hit us if they didn’t. I think they took a few photos of the camels crossing the road with humans on their backs. It was a strange sight.

Unfortunately, I had a “different” kind of handle than everyone else. Everyone else had circular handles but I had a triangular one. It was harder to hold onto. Why me?

The ride was actually pretty nice once you got into it. By the end I was leaning into the rhythm of the camel’s jerky walk. Getting on the camel was difficult, but getting off was a whole different level. You were supposed to lean back, so you wouldn’t fall over, but even doing that I thought I was going to topple over the camel’s head onto the ground. Thankfully, that didn’t happen and I lived to tell the tale.

-Madi