Self-Erecting Tent {Gadling}

Aug 20th 2006 4:47PM We saw one of these tents in action in Mali last year - one of the guides loaned us one - it was pretty large (about 2.5 ft. in diameter) folded up, but it worked great to open a tent in the dark, which we did frequently on our river trip on the Niger. But it was always a problem for anyone to fold up in the morning - we had to search through about 6 people who couldn't figure it out ( including two university students and our muscular guide just about ripped it to pieces one morning out of frustration. It takes someone with visual motor skills to repack (unfortunately I was the only one in the group who could figure it out - the directions were on the tent, and no one could figure it out, but me, and I didn't get to sleep in it)