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Today I have a big day of organising clients onto horses and camels, I'm slightly worried about this as neither the horse nor camel driver speaking English. The horseman turns up on time and I get Andrea and John away on time, shortly afterward the camel driver turns up and I get Nat and Dane onto their camels, Dane's camel takes ages to co-operate but eventually sits down and lets him climb on.
Now that everyone else has either gone hiking or has chosen to ride some form of beast, I am free to go about my day. I have realised that I am much closer to a group of random dinosaur sculptures than I was at the last camp and have agreed to a walk to them with Maria, Bob and Robert also tag along. The hike is much shorter than expected and we arrive at the park to a load of school kids, the security guard says we are not allowed in and waits for the school kids to leave and then lets us in for 1000 tugrigs, about eighty cents.
We head in and immediately start taking silly pictures of ourselves with the concrete statues, which as it turns out are part of a random Ger camp, which now kind of looks like the abandoned visitors centre in Jurassic Park. There is a T-Rex who looks like he is stalking his pray, I give Maria my camera and she counts down from three and on three I bolt and she takes the photo so it looks like the overgrown concrete lizard is chasing me. Classic. I also take one of Bob, our avid photographer, taking a photo of the T-Rex just before it's about to bite his head off. Not that far fetched a notion as far as Bob is concerned.
I set up my camera on a rock and take a picture of me protecting my group from a Velociraptor, I'm an awesome tour leader. There is another T-Rex fighting a Triceratops, I manage to climb on the back of the Triceratops, so it looks like I'm riding him. Finally, I have a real epic mount, don't worry if you didn't get that reference, just means you're not a WarCraft nerd. There are another couple of dinosaurs head butting each other, I crouch down between them, faining fear and Maria takes another photo.
We walk back to the camp laughing about our experience and lo and behold everyone is back after only an hour on the horses and camels, lucky people don't seem upset by this. Maria and Bob volunteer for the next camel ride and they only want an hour anyway. After Maria and Bob get back its time for another massive lunch and after lunch it is mine and Ian's turn to go for a camel ride.
I manage to get onto my camel, which was actually Dane's camel, I can already tell that this animal has had enough and on top of that he is being herded by a guy on a horse. Mongolian horses are incredibly skittish and the skittishness is rubbing off on the camel. I last about fifteen minutes, of which the camel has tried to bolt three times including once down a hill. I can't afford an injury, I've got too much responsibility here. I have to tell the camel driver about three times that I want to get down. No problem, no problem , he keeps saying. YES PROBLEM! I insist and he finally lets me down and I walk back to the camp.
I get back to camp and take it easy until Ian gets back and I need to pay the camel driver, I manage to get a small discount because he has only given people a one hour ride instead of two. It's a small victory, which I will pass on to the passengers later. I then get ready for dinner, which is the awesome whole BBQ'd sheep again, followed by a bottle of vodka to help it digest. At least that what we tell ourselves.
After dinner, its back to my Ger for more drinking and card games, Bull s*** this time and an early celebration of Nat's birthday which is tomorrow. We all stay up until about 3am, drinking and listening to music and then everyone heads off back to their own Gers. I light my fire like a pro and head off to bed myself.
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Mum What a fun day for you all.