Al Dafra Camel festival!!!

So, I was blessed enough the other day to be invited to the Al dafra camel festival where they select the world's prettiest camel, and also where hundreds of thousands of dollars change hands every day for the purpose of buying and selling various camels. I had no idea there were so many types of different camel...but are there three varieties based on purpose (some for milk, some for meat, some for working/riding, and some for racing!); then there are different camels based on there they come from. Sudanese camels are typically an orangish brown colour and very beautiful. there are your standars camel browns, more like sand, and then there are black camels who are enormous and remind me far more of dinosaurs than of a modern creature. Almost all of the camels are femals, and males are typically castrated to keep them under control. I heard that cow farmers in Canada castrate their male cows because testosterone makes the meat tough...I'm assuming the same is true for camels - though it's only an assumption.
I certainly learned a lot about the camels...like, the male leader will always be castrated to keep his temperment, and because he's so well tempered, they hope that the rest of the camels will take his expample. I learned that camels when angry, will sit on their enemies, and one must be very careful around an acgry camel, and also that when a camel is mad at you, or you hurt it...it will remember forever, and you'll never ever be away from it's vengeful eye. They foam at the mouth when their overheated, and also when they're angry. Many camels at the festival were very angry indeed.
We met a few very friendly and affectionate camels, who reminded me of puppies...only wanting a little love. But most of them seemed snarly and they were bleating...which sounded again, like a dinosaur...or like a disgusting burp that went on for ever.
While we were driving down the road, attempting to pick up a lady who we had brought, but who refused to sit in our vehicle as she prefered to walk down the road and take a picture of Every single camel she saw (did i mention how many hundreds there were?), we saw a huge caravan of cars all honking and cheering, and men running beside, and basically, there was one poor camel stuck in the middle of all the cars, running along with them, and hating life (I knew from the foam). Anyway, we swooped around and asked someone what was going on, and they said "one million, yaaaah!!" (see photo above) So, evidently, this camel had one the 1 million dirham prize (which is like 350000 CAN) and had also won several beautiful vehicles (cars are always given as prizes), and the whole crew were running beside it cheering! So, we joined into the camel parade and started honking right along with everyone else! it was a wonderful experience, and though the camel may have hated it, I loved every moment. I got several pictures of the worlds prettiest camel of the year 2010, and I'll be sure to post them soon.
On the way back we tried desperatley to find the camel burgers that had been advertised on the internet site of the event, however, we couldn't find anything of the sort...only falafel wraps. So, we let that idea go. I have now added camel to the list of meats I'd like to try while here, the other one being shark meat.
I don't know yet what I'll be doing next weekend, but it is a long weekend, so something fun should happen!!!
Stay tuned.

love.