December 28 Wednesday
Morning Camel Ride
This morning we left the hotel about 9.30 for a camel ride. We walked to the open ferry boat and rode the Nile downstream and across to the place where we picked up the camels. I was quite nervous about riding a camel because I thought it would sway and give me motion sickness so I took a Dramamine before I left the hotel. At the camels Jarrah was the first one to mount his, then Jade, Paul and finally it was my turn. Ahmed gave me a hand up as I couldn’t swing my leg over the camel and I was just inching my way forward on the saddle when the camel decided to stand up. WOW!!!!!!!! When camel stands up their hind quarters go up first making you fall forward then their front legs stand up rocking you backwards. I wasn’t ready for it at all and I screamed loudly. The camel drivers laughed at me but I was so terrified that I didn’t even notice. I was so high sitting on the camel—much higher than on a horse—and I didn’t know what to expect next so I was both crying and laughing at the same time. Tears were running down my cheeks and the camel driver and Ahmed were asking me if I was OK. I said I was but that I wanted the camel to take a few steps so I could see what its motion was like. The driver led me for a few steps and it was fine so we headed off. My camel was named Lulu, Jade was on Flower, Paul’s we can’t quite remember and Jarrah was on Cuckoo at first but then another driver came along and he changed to another camel named Lulu. It was magical riding camels in the sand dunes. Jade and Jarrah had full charge of their camels, but Paul and I were both led by the drivers who walked beside their camels. For most of the time my camel’s rein was hooked into the saddle of Jade’s camel. The driver was behind us giving each camel a whip on its flank and saying ‘Yella’ which means ‘Let’s go’. Jade loved this and kept telling her camel, ‘Yella Flower!’
We got to the ruin of St. Simeon’s Monastary and Ahmed wasn’t there so we were a bit confused about how we were going to get tickets to go into the monastery. The camel drivers were also asking us if we wanted to take the camels back to the boat. We said no because we thought we were walking back. Anyway, it seemed that Ahmed had arranged for our tickets to the monastery so that was fine and one of the men who was there at the entrance took us in and with his limited English showed us around. He showed us where the monks slept, made bread, where visitors including Muslim visitors passing through stayed, where they made wine, etc. At the end of the tour he asked for money. I guess we should have expected this. I gave him one pound as this is what I’d given the camel drivers each. He was not happy. Later Ahmed told us that a tip should be a minimum of 5 pounds—that’s less than $A1. It is hard to know whether to tip since many of our tips are covered by the tipping kitty we’ve given Ahmed. Anyway, when we came out of the monastery our camels were still there and we were asked again if we wanted to ride them to the boat. We pointed to where the river was so that they knew not to take us back the way they came. We took the camels to the boat not knowing whether we were supposed to or not but I guess we were. Ahmed met us there and we took the ferry across the river, returned to our hotel to pick up our bags and transferred to the Nile cruise boat. We had lunch on the boat—all of our meals are covered for the three days we will be on board. The rest of the day was free. At night Paul and I returned to the market to make other souvenir purchases. We bought some keychains, t-shirts and I picked up some additional pashminas.
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