Turns Out Camels Are Quite Fast

When I first got to Dahab, I was amazed at just how many camels there were. You’d always seen them on the TV for Egyptian tourist adverts but I never realised just how many there are. Of course they are the method of transport for the Bedouins (local people in the area) however since the massive influx of tourists have arrived, one villager can own hundreds. There have even been stories of local farmers offering X amount of camels for a western woman. If you’ve ever wondered how much your life is worth, go and ask an Egyptian, it’s quite humbling. Anyway, you can easily see hundreds and hundreds of these majestic creatures lying down on the beaches quietly waiting until they are called upon to entertain. They hold their heads up high and look at you as if you are the dirt on their hoof. I have never seen an animal look so patronising without even trying. It’s as if they’re saying ‘look I make the rules here, this is my back yard. I will move when I’m ready, it may not be to your liking but then that doesn’t really register with me.’ It’s often difficult to look a camel in the eye because it appears like it doesn’t even want to waste its time doing that.

It was for the first couple of days therefore that I held these creatures in quite high regard. Maybe I had underestimated them, maybe they were really intelligent, maybe it’s the camel and not the dolphin that are the next intelligent mammals after humans. I wondered why no one else thought the same as me, and then after just watching them for more than five minutes, you begin to see why. In that short amount of time, my comparisons of them had gone from a mystical majestic creature, to having the intelligence of a Jack Russell with ADHD. Here are two stories for you about this animal that confirmed my new beliefs:

I saw one camel walking up to a small wire fence that must have come up to no more than his/her knees. It carried on walking into the fence and took a little stumble but managed to regain its balance. Fair play I thought, it’s only a small fence and it’s obviously not seen it. Its head is up quite high after all. It then took a few steps back and had another go at the fence without picking its legs up. Again it took a little stumble but again managed to regain balance. You could literally see the thought processes flashing between its two brain cells trying to figure out how to overcome this problem. Did it lift its leg over the tiny little fence and carry on, on its way? Did it figure this challenge was too tough for now and find another route past? No, because that would be using something called common sense. What the camel chose to adopt was brute force, a lot like my granddads theory. If at first it doesn’t work, hit it. This camel therefore adopted the same doomed theory, this time with more speed. However unfortunately, the fence had other ideas and brought the camels’ head safely to the ground.

The second story involved six of these Einsteins of the animal kingdom. What is it that they say, “never underestimate the power of stupidity in large numbers”. Well between the six of them, they had enough brain power this time to perform a synchronised run.  All six of them were tied together so they were running two by two in three lines. Camels always look funny when they run as they are some the only a few creatures with four legs to use this unique running style. Unlike horses or dogs who gallop and therefore the back legs are working separately to the front, with a camel the left and right side work in unison creating a rocking motion as the animal gets quicker. Also, when they run they look like they have no idea where they are going and are in a panic. So imagine if you will, six camels jogging (probably not the right word) along two by two with rope linking them together. I imagine they had just escaped from their owner, as they were looking troubled. Now, what happened next could have been avoided by anyone with the slightest ounce of intelligence, however not these guys. As they were jogging up the road, they were heading towards a lamp post. Problem being that the two groups of three were either side with the rope inbetween (if you haven’t figured out what’s going to happen yet, give it a go yourself). Did the camels stop and think this out? No. What they thought was the right thing to do was to apply the “brute force” approach and plough through. To give them credit, they are extremely large and powerful creatures so they may have stood an albeit slim but credible chance of knocking over the lamppost and carrying along their way. Unfortunately the lamppost, like the fence earlier wasn’t having any of it and brought the front two camels heads together with quite some force. As if that wasn’t painful enough, the remaining four joined the party at speed also. It then took literally eight minutes for the six of them to figure out what was going on and how to release themselves from the grip of the concrete structure.

 

The reason I tell you these stories is not only to highlight the stupidity of these creatures, but to show that sometimes there maybe something even less intelligent out there… (me).

 

It was a couple of weeks in to my Egyptian adventure by which time I had become very familiar with the bars. It was on the way back from one of these bars at about three in the morning, that I was walking along a deserted road with a burger in my hand. Being slightly worse for wear, I was stumbling around losing my flip flops every couple of steps and then spending the next minute shouting for them and getting angry when they didn’t reply. It had taken me about twenty minutes to cover about fifty meters when I came across a camel dining out on a piece of cardboard. Naturally in my inebriated state, I felt it necessary to go and discuss my problems with my new friend who I named Bono. After pretty much solving all of the world’s problems, I decided not to include Bono in my fortunes as he had come up with nothing. He was however staring point blankly at my burger. After saying goodbye to my new albeit rather judging friend, I threw him a bit of my burger and continued on my hazy route home.

After about ten meters, I turned round to see the Irish rock star directly behind me. ‘Oh, I see. Not willing to help me save the world, but a mention of a burger and you’re all ears’ I slurred as the animal looked at me understandably confused. ‘Maybe we should sit down and talk abo…’ It was at this point Bono had apparently had enough of listening and was going straight for my burger. It was also at this point that adrenalin had kicked in and made me realise that I was in fact talking to a eight foot animal face to face. I immediately turned and sprinted, burger in hand, along the road into the night. It was also at this point Bono decided to run after me and it turns out, they can run a lot faster than a drunk man in flip flops. I don’t know if you’ve tried running in flip flops but it is no easy feat. It was after about a minute before a received a stitch and decided to lose the flip flops. I was throwing bits of burger at Bono who was literally clearing up whilst maintaining his healthy pace. I tried everything, sidesteps, running one way then at the last minute darting the other. At one point I was even screaming at Bono that I would give him my burger if he stopped chasing me. Just a quick side note here, you cannot reason with a camel whom you have just met.

As if the situation couldn’t have gotten worse, I was not entering into a large area full of people watching TV’s and smoking. I gave one last attempt to lose the camel before I entered the busy crowds, by throwing the remainder of my burger at Bono. What I saw next actually made me lose my footing. Bono, middle sprint caught the burger in his mouth, didn’t even chew and carried on towards me. ‘SHHHHIIIITTTT!’ I screamed as I careered bare foot into the crowded street. When people saw the camel, there was an eruption of laughter, which confused me even more. Whistles and horns were heard as I was now in a full heart attack inducing sprint to get away from the charging beast. It was at this point that I saw a wall and with all the adrenalin coursing through my veins, this seemed like the safest bet to my freedom. I flew over the wall like free running champion and began to relax mid air as I knew my troubles were over. Unfortunately for me, karma had other ideas as I was now falling fifteen feet onto some rocks. Three scars requiring twelve stitches was the result and afterwards found that Bono had stopped chasing me as soon as he had entered the crowded street.