Pot Smuggling Camels
My friend Tomer told me this story today that I want to share with you.
Apparently one of the ways to smuggle pot and hash into Israel is over the large border with Egypt, except they do it with Camels. They train these camels to come home on their own, and send them in to Sinai. In Sinai they put bags of hash on the camels (probably from Beduins) and send the camels home. These camels travel for a week or so over the desert (cause they don't really need water) until they reach their home base in the Negev desert in Israel (also Beduins).
How crazy is that?
posted by yoyo at 12:40 AM
7 Comments:
wait, camels don't need water?
1:58 AM
Of course they do... just not as frequently as you do.
11:29 AM
They store water in that big hump on their back -- or depending on if you're in Asia or Africa, in those 2 big humps on their back. The 1 hump model is a dromedary and the 2-humper is a bactrian camel. I think they're close cousins of South American llamas, but ask somebody who really knows something before you bet money on that.
You have a really interesting blog. I'm always going to NL. Should I go to Mastricht? Did you like it?
Yeah, I heard about the Camel Smuggling from Egypt. But that hash/pot is supposed to be really crappy. My burning question: How do smugglers get the really excellent Bekaa Valley hashish into Israel from Lebanon? Because I'm sure they do, international borders, even highly militarized ones, can't ever keep out things that people really like.
I saw t-shirts for an Israeli political party called Gush Hasheesh. They got my vote.
I have no idea how i found your blog. I posted something to my blog last night, and while I slept, Robots cooked about about 30 cross-links, and yours was one of them. Shalom Salaam Paz Pax Pace Paix Selam etc.!
9:14 PM
Oh, more about camels.
Modern times haven't been kind to camels in the Middle East and North Africa. As cars and trucks replaced them, they became less and less valuable, except to the last nomadic desert peoples like Bedouins. Often in modern times their last remaining value is to be eaten at big wedding feasts.
But now and then rich people with old Disney Hollywood fantasies want to buy superb gorgeous Disney Hollywood thoroughbred camels to show them off.
They can't buy them in the Middle East. The world's most wonderful camels are now bred by Australian camel breeders.
Around 1900 Australians decided to build a railroad straight north from Adelaide into the Australian desert.
The actual labor and transporting of the equipment was done by imported Afghanis and their camels. The railroad -- I rode it to Alice Springs, it's wonderful! -- is called The Ghan.
Some camels wandered away, and really liked the Australian desert, and while Middle Eastern and Saharan camels were disappearing, bred a pretty big herd of pretty healthy, tough, excellent camels. Some breeders recaptured some of them and started a fancy camel breeding industry.
They also tried to use camels in the USA's southwest desert, but the USA's desert has the wrong kind of sand for camel feet, and runaway camels didn't survive and breed in the old Wild West.
Mah zeh "camel" b'Ivrit? I know it's Gamal in Arabic.
11:19 PM
Bob, Camel in Hebrew is Gamal as well (same as Arabic). I'm shocked at your knowledge of camels...
Maastricht was a great little town (little being the key word here), after about 4 months you have been to every bar and restaurant in the city. Keep in mind it is also not that close to amsterdam. It's about 1.5 hours to brussels by train, and 2.5 hours to amsterdam, the most southern city in the Netherlands.
Its gorgeous, but tiny.
12:37 PM
This explains so much! Back in 96, you weren't as into it as the rest of us... so this might be news to you. None of us were ever able to figure out why we'd get to the end and find sand at the bottom of our matchboxes.
9:14 PM
Eric! Come visit in Israel!
8:56 PM
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