It feels like Ed and I are the only two dogs left in the camp. The marathon and hoopla has ended, the various Italian, German and Spanish contingents have either gone home or moved on to other camps or locations (and we havent thanks to our (dis)organisation), and the camp of Samara has pretty much reverted back to its normal life…which is not much at all. The locals, with their colour, life and laughs have retreated back to the relative coolness of their mud dwellings. So yesterday we wandered around a pretty deserted camp looking for inspiration, or entertainment or even just a bottle of water but found nothing. At one point after a fruitless search for somewhere that sold water, we just sat on a stone in the scorching midday heat, with just half a pack of smokes and a bottle of coke to last us through the day. (We’ve lost count of the number of times we have said ‘if only we had a cooler full of beer…’ - obviously with alcohol being unavailable here and us not having the foresight to bring any with, we’ve been left with taking up smoking as the only form of bodily relaxation/abuse we could think of. post-marathon); It was a strange experience. It brought home that this was the reality of life in the camps, not the amped up version we had experienced in previous days. So we hung out, which in itself was novel and enjoyable. We drank tea, and then more tea, with our host family, played and laughed with the two boys of the family, and slowed our rhythms down to those of the locals….chicken soup for the soul.