Ras Abu Galum

After snorkeling we had an old Bedouin man take us on camels a few miles north to the Bedouin camp of Ras Abu Galum. Bedouin are the nomadic desert people who live in the desert. Nowadays, many of the Bedouin make money by taking people on trips into the desert. It is definitely a hard life, and I can’t imagine how they survive in the hills of such an unforgiving desert.

Riding the camels was super fun, although it was pretty hard on the anatomy. I was sore for two days afterwards. Camels are really weird looking creatures. Their back legs bend in a different direction than their front ones do. They have freakishly long necks, and their eyes stick out the side of there head just like E.T. Dustin kept saying, “I don’t usually have violent urges, but I really want to punch a camel in the face.” I assured him that if he punched my camel in the face he would live to regret it, and he never did end up punching a camel.

The Bedouin camp was a small settlement of shacks. Some guys that lived there had just caught some fish that morning, so they cooked it up for us for lunch. It was one of those things where they just drop a whole fish in the oil and cook it. To eat it, you just dig into the side of it with your fingers. It was really good, but after a while I noticed by looking at the skin from the inside that the fish was one of the brilliant rainbow colored fish that I had seen that morning while snorkeling. I felt kind of bad, but since it was already dead I ate it anyways. We were offered “Bongo” to smoke, which sounded fun but we graciously declined.

After wandering around a bit, we hopped back on the camels. Dustin put it pretty well. “Nothing sucks about this right now, we are riding camels down the coast in Africa, we are wearing these Egyptian head wraps, and look, there’s Saudi Arabia!”

Hopefully I can get some pictures of this day posted later.