Buche du Nouvel An

(or the New Year's Log)

We left Rabat on New Year's Eve, and up to that point had not noticed much seasonal decorations.  Yesterday, a Saturday, I went to the university for class, and it was the most active I had seen it on an early Saturday morning--one faculty (school) was humming, and it never had anything on Saturday.  Turns out it was a big day for exams.  From what I saw, the students seemed to be excited.  Then we saw Santa balloons, and when we went into the bakery to get bread, the display cases were full of holiday specials.

Today after lunch at the local Syrian restaurant (there's another over by the medina, a match for the multiple Turkish restaurants), we stopped by to get a cake for our celebration for tonight (and tomorrow, since even the smallest was not meant for just two people).

No questions asked, the holiday cake is automatically wrapped with a bow.  The bakery has women who get your order and wrap it (pastries in a pretty box, bread just in a bag), and they tell the man behind the cash register what you got.

At home, the holiday theme is clear.  It appears that some of the "Christmas" festivities have moved to New Year's, for a universal theme.  We were in Thailand for Christmas and New Year's, and they had appropriated much of the commercial spirit of buying things in all the big stores in Bangkok.

This was the hotel in Fes where we spent Christmas Eve.

The hotel in Marrakech.

After couscous Friday comes....

Leftover Saturday.

And many of the leftovers are set out for the furry friends.  These are in the gardens of the kasbah of Rabat.

Sand Dunes

Most people think the desert is just a sandy waste land.  In fact most of Morocco that I've seen looks more like Death Valley in the US, with lots of rock and even a lot of plants.

The real desert of Morocco.

The desert everyone pictures in the Sahara.  In fact Morocco only has two relatively small regions of dunes like this, Erg Chebbi (here) and Erg Chigaga which takes a fairly long ride in a 4x4 to get to the real desert.

Probably every tourist in Morocco wants to ride a camel out to the dunes to watch sunset.  Somehow that's easier to do sunset than watch sunrise, but I did both, although it's easier to catch sunrise in winter when it comes later in the day.  So around late afternoon, the camels are lined up waiting for the minivans to bring the riders.

MERIT DEM showing Erg Chebbi, which has about a dozen large dunes.  They remind me of the Eureka Valley Sand Dune in Death Valley National Park (200+ m tall), or the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado (230 m tall), although both of the US dunes sit adjacent to a large range front, and Erg Chebbi sits in a much larger plain.  The mesa/table mountain to the east of the dunes lies in Algeria, across a closed border.

Topographic profile across Erg Chebbi, showing three of the dunes which reach about 160 m above the surrounding area.

Sunrise on Erg Chebbi, over the Algerian border.  There are much larger sand seas east and south of Morocco, but even there, I think there is a lot more rock than our perceptions indicate.  You can also see the front along the crests of the dunes; it gets cold in December in the desert. 

Profile from the dunes to the Algerian border, which offers a good view into Morocco and the dunes.

Who's reading this?

With a little effort, I can see who is reading this.  Except for the US entries, and most of the Morrocco ones that would be Mary and I,  I really don't know.  But it's kind of interesting to speculate.  Are Bing and Google responsible (mostly it's Windows).

Sidi-Boughaba national park

On our recent trip to Kenitra, we hiked through this park.  It's located between two high ridges on the coastal plain, one just inland and the other a little farther back with the Kasbah of Mehdia which was contested in World War II.

Map of our route.  From the beach and seafood restaurant, we headed SE, then turned NE to follow the lake.

Sign urging preservation of the natural environment, in Arabic and then French.

Hiking trails.  No offroad hiking, but even on a wonderful fall afternoon, there was little traffic to worry about.

Cacti are in bloom.

Waterfowl everywhere.  One of the times when I almost wish I had a long telephoto, but then I remember I would have to carry it, and I'm just glad I have a point and shoot with an optical zoom that's better than the smart phone.

Families enjoying a picnic.  Sharing the barbecue grill for the meet is a tea pot, apparently a requirement for a Moroccan picnic.

To boldly go where Lonely Planet does not write

Last weekend we went to Kenitra and Mehdia, which are sometimes know as Port Lyautey.  This is the 75th anniversary of the landings in Morocco to start the North African campaign. Lonely Planet does not have either place in the index, so we were unable to get much information.  In particular I wanted to knew where the petit taxis could go, but we had to wait until we arrived.

We wanted to go to the Kasbah of Mehdia, the beach, and Sidi-Boughaba national park.  On arrival, we found all of those were outside the city limits of Kenitra, with the train station, so the petit taxi could only take us to the grand taxi stand ($1 for two).  Then once the grand taxi filled up, off to the beach ($0.70 each).

Petit taxi at the railroad station in Kenitra.  Each city has a different color for its petit taxis, and if they are caught outside the city limits, they are in trouble.

The beach at Mehdia.

The seafood restaurant at the Mehdia beach.  It was Sunday lunch, and a large number of families were coming to restaurant for lunch.

Moroccan restaurants specialize in fresh fruit and vegetable juices.  They always come with at straw.

We got grilled fish: swordfish, salmon, and Saint Pierre.  This was a subdued plate; they had huge plates, and were doing a booming business with those.

Mehdia Kasbah, which resisted the US landings 75 years ago.  It overlooks the river.

View of the kasbah, out to the Atlantic.

Route of our day in Kenitra.  The purple points mark the train, petit taxi, grand taxi, and finally another petit taxi back to the train station.  The cyan (1 meter/sec) shows where we walked; one of our longest walks of the time in Morocco.  Just to the left of the speed legend is the entrance to the former US Naval Air Station.

On return, I looked again in Lonely Planet, and while the two towns don't rate an entry in the index, they have very brief mentions, and the national park gets a small paragraph.  

How good is my phone's GPS?

I teaching several lessons and GPS, and the smartphone is a very attractive option for collecting positions since you already have one with you at all times.

The metrics for error measurements are not features very prominently by the cell phones, or even the recreational units.

So on our latest train trip, I realized we had been over that stretch of track on a trip to Tangier (going and return), a trip to Fes (going and return), another tip to Fes (just going, since we did camels en route to Marrakech), a trip to Meknes (going and return), and a trip to Kenitra (going and return).  The GPS was logging the whole time, so I have 9 trips over that section of track.

There are double tracks (using the British road standard, drive on the left track), and we could be anywhere from the right to the left side of the railcar, but it should provide a good indication of how good the GPS is.

Square symbols show the GPS position.  The square  black grid is a 100 m UTM grid.  This is an open section of track between  Rabat and Kenitra, where the train cruises at about 135 km/hr.  I have to think about the best way to quantify the results, but eyeballing shows the results are pretty good.  I also have to see if there are some sections in Rabat, where we walk frequently on the sidewalk and where high buildings do not affect things, to see if that provides a better picture.

For the first time, since we've been here, I've noticed that my phone is getting the US, Russian, and European GNSS satellites, so with three times the satellites, results might well be much better than they were previously.   As a result, I'm starting to think I should switch to calling the system GNSS instead of GPS; teaching African students is also an impetus to use the more generic terms.

Rainy season has arrived

We had two long days of rain in the past two weeks, and both days I was teaching.  It's a 20 minute walk, and you can cut off about half the time by taking the train, but might not save much time because at times (like early Saturday morning when I teach) the trams only run every 20 minutes.  If you just miss a tram, while you have to wait you could almost have walked the entire distance.

The normal stores around here do not sell umbrellas.  However, when it looks like rain, the sidewalk vendors appear with a variety of umbrellas.

View from the outside of Salle 17, on the second floor, showing the rain clouds, at 9 am on a Saturday morning.  Cold and depressing day.

Inside of salle 17.  Note the VGA cable from the overhead projector, for which I had to get the HDMI to VGA dongle.  At least with the dark sky outside the bright sun light would not obliterate the screen.  I was very early, since I left to with enough time to take the tram, but I just missed one (saw it pulling out as I rounded the corner) and since it wasn't really raining I just walked the whole way.

My umbrella.  The third time I opened it, it refused to stay open.  Two PhDs and a PE could not figure out way; we could not see anything broken.  We had no baling wire, and no duck tape, the go to repair tools, so we were briefly stumped.  Then I remembers the fiber string that was on the bottle of olive oil from the cooperative around the corner, and we tied it open.  Only problem is you cannot close the umbrella, but.....

Our Pâtisserie

Right around the corner, on the way to the tram stop or just about anywhere else we want to go, is a delightful  Pâtisserie.  Moroccans love the cookies and pastries, and serve them with mint tea.

The goodies are wrapped in a nice box for transport.  After one class, one of the students, who had just had a baby, brought cookies and juice to share with her classmates, and insisted I join the celebration.  This the class that ends at noon Saturday, reminding me of my long ago undergraduate days, when classes ended at noon, but then there was still a parade of inspection before the weekend really could begin.  Saturday classes here are not the norm; I walk by some of the other faculties (schools) in the university on the way to my class, and they are pretty dead and locked up Saturday morning.

The box from our Pâtisserie, in front of the cactus we're bringing back from the dead.  This is the small box, when you're not feeding a large group.

Open the box, and savor what you just bought on the way home.

Raspberry cheese cake.

Pedestrian life

Pedestrians must be ever vigilant.  Sidewalks are uneven, and frequently used for parking cars.  You often have to walk in the street, or walk about closely parked cars.  Traffic signals are not where you expect.  The walk signal for pedestrians is frequently very  dim (the polite way to say almost impossible to see), usually has little warning when it turn red (which at least is usually much brighter), and often does not indicate how many cars will be coming around the roundabout, or how fast they will be going.

So it was a very pleasant surprise to find this spot--bright walk light, clear indication of how it will remain green.  This is a small sidestreet, but promises that pedestrian life will improve.  And for all the current challenges, most drivers are polite, and you'll eventually get across (but we choose our routes carefully to avoid the worst intersections).

Visa trip

Visas are one of the less pleasant parts of travel.  We're spoiled, because we rarely need one to travel overseas, with some exceptions which for us have to the trips to Thailand and China.  I've also needed one to a certain western European country, but only because I had to travel on an official passport, and the employer handled most of the bother after I got the photo and filled in the paperwork.  But those issues pale in comparison with what many foreigners have to go through to visit the US.

Here in Morocco, you get the visa when you arrive, it's free, and the only catch is that it's only good for 90 days.  Then you "have" to go out of the country.  While there is a theoretical way to get a longer document, we were advised not to bother, and to accept the hardship of  a weekend in Europe.  We picked Madrid, due to cheap flights with RyanAir, which turned out to be very pleasant.

In Madrid, we visited a lot of museums: the Prado (art), the Archaeological Museum (professional stop; in the section on exploring in the 1400's and 1500's there was an astrolabe engraved with a stereographic net, used in both geology and mapping), the National Library (BNE, another professional stop, as their sign promised an exhibit on maps, which are both beautiful and related to my GIS teaching), and the Naval Museum (another professional stop, to go with the naval museums in Sweden, England, France, and the Netherlands where I have taken students).

To get around, we did a lot of walking, to walk off the calories from all the tapas.  It was a chance to test my mapping software, using the Spanish lidar data on the web.  After using it, I think it is close to the best from the 8 countries I have been using.  It was a very complete classification, and is the only country to include RGB imagery in the lidar files.  It is one of the lower resolution data sets, only able to produce 2 m grids, but that is adequate, and keeps the file sizes down.

The maps below show our routes, over the three days.  The GPS did not record for some short stretches, and you can see places where the urban canyons led to incorrect positions, and meandering roads even when we walked in straight lines.

The lidar classification, overlaid on a DSM to provide some shadows.

Elevations on the DSM.

Lidar return intensity, probably from a near infrared (NIR) laser.

The RGB, from a mapping camera flown with the lidar.  Note that Madrid is full of red tile roofs.

This is the map I used the most on my phone, with our hotel marked with the blue symbol, and the subway stops also marked.  The weather was so nice, and the city compact, that we wound up only using the subway to and from the airport.