Day 18


Tuesday, January 23, 2018


I slept ok last night. Half of my body hangs off the bed because I am so tall so I slept curled up. I could not get the wifi to work at this new hotel. I was happy that at least the shower was warm. We soon moved to Chez Salim and had breakfast. I was happy to have orange juice at breakfast again. Our new hut is super nice. There is actually a bathroom, I have my own large bed, and the wifi works from my room. Too bad I did not get this hut earlier in the trip.

            After breakfast, all of us went down towards the village to ride camels. This was another part of the trip that I have been waiting for. There were only four camels so some of us chose to ride quads while we were waiting for the camels. Rohit and I originally wanted to ride a dune so the guy brought us one over. We paid the man and got into our dune. However, the dune would not start. The men that worked with the dunes tried fixing it but we could not get it to work. Rohit told the guy to just bring two quads instead, one for him and one for me. The guy seemed fine with this and brought the two quads over. After we came back from our ride, the guy who sold us the quads wanted more money because we only paid for one quad. We had negotiated before that because the dune did not work, we would have two quads instead. Rohit, Matt, and the man kept arguing and we finally had to pay the man more money. I learned to not trust those Africans. They will say one thing and then change their story to try and make a profit from you.

The sand dune that I was going to ride before it broke

            Riding quads was one of the most fun activities I have ever done. There were times that I was going so fast that I thought I was going to fall off the quad. There were huge steep hills that we drove down which was a bit scary, but the entire trip was super fun. After riding the quads, I got to ride my camel. You sit on the camel while it is sitting down. When the camel stands up, your whole body almost gets thrown off the camel. A guide walked our camels around the beach for about ten minutes. At one point, the guide let go of the string he was using to lead the camels. I had to lead the camel back to the starting point. It went surprisingly well.

Quads and Camels

            After quad and camel rides, we headed towards the market. Of course, each salesperson beckoned me into their shop. I pretended to not understand them and said that I was from Germany when they asked me where I was from. I spoke in German and I was shocked that so many salespeople were fluent in German. I had conversations with some of the salespeople and I asked the one guy where he learned German. He said right in the market. I had no idea that these salespeople knew that many languages.

            The rest of the day, I was able to relax and sit by the pool.



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