2- I guess Egypt was the Sahara? I didn't really see the dunes beyond what was around the great pyramids in Giza. But there were lots of guys with camels offering pictures and rides. Actually kind of scammy though because they would stand behind you with their camel and their kid would snap a Polaroid without asking and demand money. We were told just to pay everyone. Something like that would be like $0.50.

I DID however spend 3 days with the bedouins in Southern Israel. I went to a fancy English speaking high school called The Anglican School International. You should look it up. It's a beautiful campus. There were like 20 people in my graduating class in '97. They organized a few trips for us every year. Some of them were really amazing. I got to ride through a scrubby desert in military jeeps driven by teenage soldiers once.

The bedouin trip was amazing though. They are a nomadic Arab tribe that live in tents like they have for thousands of years. They are basically the middle Eastern version of the Amish. So I've of the days we went on a 12 hour camel ride through the Negev. My camel was such an asshole that a little boy had to lead him the whole way. Did you know that a camel's neck is flexible enough to bite you while you are sitting on them? Yeah neither did I. Guess how I learned.

So on the way back my friend and I decided we were done with the camels and would rather walk. As the supreme confident 16 year olds we were, we lagged far behind the group lifting rocks to find creatures. All we found were little yellow scorpions, but we found TONS of them. We picked then up by their tails and the them at each other. Fun stuff.

Months later we were in study hall in the library just flipping through interesting books like the Guinness world records and stuff. 90's version of doom scrolling. On one page we saw that scorpion we were playing with. The "yellow Palestine scorpion" also know as a "death stalker". Yep. One of the most venomous creatures on earth. We were throwing them. Guaranteed death. Nervous system shutdown. The only thing that saved us was that truly dangerous creatures tend to be chill. Fun times.