A day of travelling
Uno as Travel
Dec|25|2006
The 23rd was a day spent in travel. We woke up in an absolutely amazing hotel after we arrived at the hotel very late and basically just plopped right into bed.
The next day would consist of 9 hours of travelling on some of the most hair razing roads ever experienced. The route out from Marrakech was fairly straight forward for any small-town outskirts, think the section between the N2 and Stellenbosch past Spier. But in this case it never really ends. The landscapes are amazingly beautiful, it has a mix of karoo nothingness and yet there is feeling of activity, as if the flat lands are breathing in a way, heaving up and down.
Our journey was a 400-500km trip from Marrakech to Fes, but we quickly realised that travelling at 80km/h won’t get us there in 4 hours. 80kph is actually a relatively fast estimate. The roads are narrow, it’s the R44, with no shoulder, all the way. Intersections also don’t exist, there are numerous traffic circles which don’t really function as traffic circles, everyone merely uses the lanes in the same way as they would a normal road, skipping the left hand side and just opting for using the one side. There is no shoulder to speak of and the possibility for hitting any of the cyclists or mopeds on the side are quite high.
Yet strangely enough we never saw any accidents. Take into consideration that the roads are very narrow in comparison to South African (secondary) roads, the roads are also fairly high, so if you manage to get into the “gutter” you would probably stay in there, and there isn’t really a public roadworks service that I could see.
So I can only think two things: Either there are no crashes as if there were they would be evident by car wrecks on the side of the road (which there is ample space for), and these would not be towed away as the infrastructure isn’t that developed, or that they have a very good infrastructure, with tow-trucks coming out into the desert to come and fetch cars that have been written off. I didn’t see one single wreck along the side of the road. I’ll keep a look out for our way back…
Halfway through, at about 3h00 we started to get a bit hungry and asked our driver to pull over somewhere so that we can get a quick snack. Lucky for us we must have been close to what is similar to our Shell Ultra City’s. We pulled in and on our right a mini-market had been erected. We walked around a bit and decided to sit down at one of the stalls (they’re all a bit generic) while our driver decided to take over control. Lucky for us as we found out no one can speak English, the other predominant language in Morocco is French, which my sister has proven to be quite provicient in. The options we had were chips, a kilo (or half) of sheep and some water and coffee. Oh, and bread. It was delicious. The meat was succulent and bread nice and warm. The chips were fairly generic, it’s interesting that they serve these with a lot of the dishes at the roadstop, almost like we have. I ordered a Cafe Noir, which had a similar taste to our stove-top coffee, but without the bitter aftertaste. I would even say that it taste almost the same as moer koffie (don’t worry Niel, it doesn’t come close to yours!). The rest of the family had the first taste of green mint tea, which is sort of the official drink in Morocco. It’s a very sweet tea that they pour out into a glass cup, then pour back into the pot to mix up the sugar and taste. This they repeat once or twice before finally holding the pot very high and pouring the tea into the cup so that it makes froth.
We finished our meal which came to about 280 Dirrams, which is about R250. That is actually a rip off we later discovered and isn’t very surprising. The rest of our trip was another 4 hours away that we spent in the car, at 6h it became dark and we started to panic as the cars were now even closer to each other. Yet still no car wrecks. Maybe it’s because the cars can’t physically drive faster than 90kph. We arrived in our majestic new Riad, greeted by our guide and followed the thin alleys (which are just asking for an Urban Assualt!) to our hotel, Riad Fes.
Technorati Tags: morocco, travel, vacation, north africa, fes, rabat, marrakech
Arrival in Madrid
Uno as Travel
Dec|22|2006
Today culminated in about 12 hours of flying and another 12 spent running around in Madrid. We arrived at abut 7h (8h South African time) in pitch darkness. And it’s cold.
Stashed our bags at the depot as we only leave for Marrakech at 10pm. We took out some jackets and warmer clothes, stashed everything else.
Made our way to the busses and took a 20 min drive into town, arriving at Av. de America. The name I don’t understand. After a quick bite to eat at one of the places we realised that we had forgot all our travel guides. We’re only in Madrid for 14 hours, 8 of which are in the town, so during the frenzy to get out we forgot everything. Dammit. No guides telling us where what is, no maps (we managed to get a basic Mcdonalds street map, so we knew where all the Mcdonalds were, great). We were looking for the area that is happening, but somehow managed to end up in “downtown”, or the business district where everyone looks generic and is on a mission. Nevermind the bunches of school kids spraying each other with shaving cream and hanging outside Burger King.
After walking up and down Calle de Goya and Calle de Alcala we decided to drop into an internet cafe. Strangely, everyone decides to take a siesta lunch break from 2-3, even though it’s 5 degrees outside, so it was quite difficult finding one, and there are probably more internet cafes in Longstreet than in the busiest centre in Madrid.
So I opened up Google maps in spanish and managed to find Calle de Fuencarral which we thought only has the Gibraud shop. Getting is easy, it only takes about a 10 minute train ride with one or two swops. When we walked into the start of Fuencarral we knew we’d hit the jack pot. Everyone suddenly looked a bit funkier and as if they had stepped out of the closed gene pool we’d seen earlier. And this is where the shopping is at. G-star, the latest pair for 100 Euro, Gibraud, Desigual, Levi’s loads of others along with a whole host of independant shops as well.
We strolled through the area taking up everything. It has a mix between the Champs Ellysee (spelling?) and Long Street. More people, smaller street, awesome atmosphere. It was strange that there weren’t any coffee shops on looking out on the street, but I think that would have been lost on the gritty edge that the area has.
By this time we were all pretty shot and decided to head back to the Airport, at about 18:00. We managed to find the right bus again and were soon on our way back.
We picked up our luggage and decided to grab a bite to eat, ditching the emptier place for something a bit more buzzy (this is now at the airport waiting room, we are 4 hours ahead of our flight). We were once again disappointed with the options available: sandwiches with ham and cheese. Bleh. My mother managed to wangle some meatballs somewhere. I’m sure we can probably order something more exotic, we’re just stumped everytime we see the menu. The portions are miserably small and about the same price as a Vida sandwich, and just as filling if you’re having that for lunch/dinner, i.e. not at all!
Check out the Flickr feed for more action.
Technorati Tags: Madrid, travel, vacation, air, barajas,
links for 2006-12-21
Uno as Uncategorized
Dec|21|2006
Where am I?
Uno as Ideas, Stellenbosch Universiteit, Web2.0
Dec|20|2006
Holy shit this is cool. Add any Google Map to your webpage in 30 Seconds. via Lifehacker.
only problem is that it doesn’t friggin want to work with wordpress. Anyone got any tips?
Technorati Tags: google maps, online, map, cape town
Update: I was planning on writing this… I think that Stellenbosch University should use this kind of system rather than it’s clunky map interface.
Go OS. If you think about it, you can start with a tagging project,
have a collective hive-mind going on what happened where. “I stubbed my
toe here” “John and Jane spent a passionate night here”. Something like
that
You can even see “Elsa se huis” next to Stias…
And Terrace.
And All Stars
Bwhahah! and Drankwinkel.
Mystic!
Wikimapia.org is my new favourite site. It is ridiculous how detailed that map is.
Mashup: Video surveilance
Dec|20|2006
Over at SmartMobs Howard Rheingold mentioned a class that:
My undergraduate class on new media and community put together a Google map that contains all the video cameras that they could identify that point into public spaces within University City (Philadelphia). The map includes a pin point on each camera, a photograph of the camera, and where appropriate comments. When viewing the map, be patient while it loads, they identified over 500 cameras and the map takes a couple minutes to load.
Which of course makes perfect sense. For a while I had a project going to map out all the surveilance cameras in Stellenbosch, unfortunately it died down when I got out of street-art. Something like this as a plug-in or “extra” on a street-art site would of course be a brilliant addition. That way you can know if you are being watched. And then not do art.
Technorati Tags: googlemaps, mashup, web2.0, smartmobs, street art, stencil, grafitti, cape town, south africa
No Design Indaba on Wikipedia
Dec|20|2006
Interesting that there is no page on Design Indaba on Wikipedia. It’s weird, DI is one of the biggest design expo’s in South Africa (if not the biggest), which maybe shows where the interest of bloggers are. Maybe I should start a page. Or something like that
Technorati Tags: design indaba, wikipedia, online
links for 2006-12-20
Uno as Uncategorized
Dec|20|2006
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claimID lets you track, verify, classify, annotate, prioritize and share the information that is about you online.
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Is your company, association, or agency making changes involving people, processes, and technology? Are you looking for ways to use social networking or collaboration tools? Do you need objective and dispassionate advice or management support?
links for 2006-12-19
Uno as Uncategorized
Dec|19|2006
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MARITHE + FRANCOIS GIRBAUD
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Keeping you up to date with the latest on mashups and the new Web 2.0 APIs
Africa ain’t on the map
Dec|18|2006
A search for Africa on Programmableweb.com doesn’t reveal anything. That’s slightly disconcerting don’t you think?
Programmableweb is an awesome site that I just stumbled across while looking for some mashups.
ProgrammableWeb is where you can keep-up with the latest mashups, what’s new and interesting with Web 2.0 APIs, and the Web as Platform in general.
This means that:
There aren’t any mashup for anything African. No distribution network analysis, no map of Cape Town (Long street has a Myspace page…) with places to stay etc. no list of shops.
Nothing.
It’s weird. In a way understandable, we don’t have a high level of broadband penetration. But surely that shouldn’t stop us from developing some products?
A few ideas:
Afrikaanse-mense
Maps the location of afrikaans speaking people, see who is in the area. (Net vir jou Gerhard!)
Cycling locations
Map trails, starting points, spots where dogs are. Upload your locations. This can take over Mtbroutes.co.za. Easily.
Shops
Crikey, that this hasn’t been done is ridiculous. Map the location of shops, bars, clubs, places to do things (Neighbourhood Goods market is a good idea, I’ve tried it at 43 places).
Sex Shops
For all them tourists. Or you can just go here.
Basically, cloning everything at Programmableweb and giving it a local interface. Most of the sites (the mashups) are mainly for US residents.
Maybe if we get our parts of Maps.Google updated we’ll have a larger uptake. It’s happening….
Post-post update:I came across Skyrove, which is quite a nifty little mashup.
Technorati Tags: web2.0, mashup, cape town, south africa, technology
Pay your fines online
Uno as Stellenbosch Universiteit
Dec|18|2006
Stellenbosch now offers motorists the chance to pay traffic fines over the Internet, as well as verify the fines by viewing online pictures from speed and red light cameras.
About time if you ask me. I think it’s already possible to do that in Cape Town..
Over at Myadsl