Runaway pregnant camel bucks American tourist in Morocco. She’s suing TripAdvisor
A woman boarded an uncooperative camel in Morocco without a safety briefing and was left dangling from its side when the pregnant animal broke free of her tour group, court documents show.
She broke her arm during the fall, and now she’s suing TripAdvisor for damages.
Breanne Ayala said the travel website and its subsidiary Viator Inc. should have known they were putting customers in danger by facilitating tours with a company that used “untrained” camels, according to a lawsuit filed in Norfolk Superior Court of Massachusetts.
“The experience sold by defendant, Viator, which is a company owned and/or controlled by defendant, Tripadvisor, exposed Ms. Ayala to unreasonable risk of injury by selling her a tour experience they knew or should have known was being carried out in an unsafe manner,” her attorneys said in the complaint.
A representative for TripAdvisor did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment.
The lawsuit was filed Dec. 30, court documents show. Ayala, who is from New Jersey, was on a trip with her family in January 2018 when the incident occurred.
According to the complaint, Ayala’s family booked the sunset camel tour in Marrakesh through Viator.
The tour promised they would be given a safety briefing before mounting their camels, then picked up by a van at the final destination and taken back to their hotel, attorneys for Ayala said in the complaint.
But that reportedly didn’t happen.
Instead, Ayala and her family were given riding apparel and put on their camels without safety instructions, the lawsuit states. While everyone else’s camels knelt for their riders, Ayala’s remained standing.
She had to be lifted into the saddle, according to the complaint.
When the tour reached its final destination, her camel again would not kneel and she had to “dismount while the camel was still standing,” the lawsuit states.
But the van never showed, so attorneys for Ayala said in the complaint that they were instructed to ride their camels back to the starting point.
“During the ride back, Ms. Ayala was told by one of the handlers that her camel was pregnant and would be giving birth in about a month,” the lawsuit states. “When Ms. Ayala and her family asked why the company was using a pregnant camel for their tours, the handlers just laughed.”
The camel then broke free of the rope tethering them to the tour group and “began to run away,” according to the complaint.
Ayala’s saddle turned on its side, leaving her “hanging from the rebar she was holding while the camel was still running,” attorneys said in the complaint.
She fell a few steps later, and her family demanded an ambulance be called.
According to the lawsuit, they waited an hour before the tour operators showed up and an ambulance was summoned. Ayala spent two nights in the hospital with a fractured right arm and pinched nerve.
She was later told she’d need physical therapy and surgeries to remove “implanted hardware,” her attorneys said in the complaint.
“She was also told that due to the low quality of stitches used in the original surgery, she would be left with a permanent scar,” the complaint states.
Ayala is suing for negligence and breach of contract and seeks damages for her broken arm, pain and suffering, several days of hospitalization, and ensuing medical costs.
