Seeing the Outback By Camel

I've been lucky enough to travel to a lot of cool places. One of my very favorites was Australia. I loved it there and would have happily moved there until I found out about all the spiders and venomous snakes. ::shudder:: I spent four weeks down under and have a lot of great memories, but one of the highlights of the trip was something I didn't want to do.

When I went to Australia, I traveled with my parents and my dad did a fair amount of work setting up some of the tours. One of the things he arranged was a camel ride while we were in Alice Springs. I was not looking forward to this and I'm sure I complained about it. Probably a lot.

No one was more surprised than me when it ended up being a lot of fun! Well, once my terror subsided.

You see, camels have an odd gait. I thought I was going to fall off with every step. I was also worried that one of the other camels in the line would bite me. Camels have a reputation as not being the friendliest creatures ever. But once I felt confident that I wasn't going to end up in the hospital, I started enjoying the trip.We traveled through a dried out river bed--and yes, I did worry about a flash flood suddenly swooping down on us and whisking camels away.

The trip ended at a vineyard where we had dinner and tasted wine. Well, my parents did. I'm not much of a wine drinker. Then we got in vans for the trip back to the hotel. They probably didn't want guests on camels after the wine or in the dark.

I try to remember this when it comes to being open to new experiences. Here I'd resisted and groused about the camel trip and it ended up being an awesome time.

Sydney Harbor in Office Supplies

This video is really cool. It might be a commercial from Australia, but I'm not 100% certain of that.