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Personal Travel Narrative 'I Can't Essay

Having plenty of time left until we were to meet back with the group and driver, my friend exclaimed, "Oh let's ride a camel!"

She pointed to an area where local men offered tourists rides on the classic desert creature. Her mother took the lead and asked one of the men how much the rides cost.

'Free to go, madam. Special for you."

"How much does it cost?" she reiterated, suspiciously aware that nothing in life is ever free.

"Free, free, you get on!" The man almost shouted at her but smiled gently at the same time.

She shrugged her shoulders, watching a couple of other tourists looking giddily happy on board their beasts of burden. Everyone seemed happy. Maybe this was just one of those nice gestures governments do to promote tourism, lik 'Alright," she said, for all three of us. She gestured to me and my friend.

"Yes, yes, come along."

The man hoisted us, one at a time, on our very own camels. Two of his friends rushed over to help. The dromedaries were huge, much larger than they seemed in the photographs I had seen, just as the pyramids surpassed my expectations. Their hides were rough like beaten up burlap sacks, and they had no tenderness to them, no soft...

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The camels moved sarcastically, as if they had roamed this very circle for years, performed these acts for silly humans because they simply had no choice. But it was fun; it was a capstone on our Giza experience, and what would a trip to the Saharan desert be without a ride on a camel's back?
The men led our camels by their ropes, and for about five minutes the three of us roamed through the tourist-infested desert, gleefully taking photos of each other from our perches.

"What?!"

My friend's mom suddenly exclaimed, causing my driver and my friend's driver to stop leading us and to turn toward her camel.

"You have got to be kidding!" she said loudly again. She's the typical American tourist, I thought in my head, embarrassed for all of us.

My driver suddenly started to chuckle. He looked up at me and said, "Ok you come down now," he said to me.

"Sure," as I made a motion to give him my hand, he looked up at me beaming and said, "You come down now. Twenty dollars."

My friend's mother, who had already negotiated her dismount, walked over to rescue me with her wallet. The only thing I could do was laugh.

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