With advanced reservation, you can catch the bus to Alto Chorrillo from either Capileira, or, as we did, several kilometers up at the Hoya del Portillo. From Alto Chorrillo, you can hike to the Refugio de Poqueira, down to the city of Trévelez, up to the famous peak Mulhacén, or over to the beautiful Siete Lagunas (seven lakes).

As is typical in Spanish national parks, the trails are not well marked. Although we asked several people for directions, we were led ambiguously towards the Mulhacén, instead of the Siete Lagunas, which we realized after speaking with some folks heading down. Rather than turning around, and hiking all the way back down to the Alto Chorrillo to start over, we decided to hike straight up and over the mountain ridge, to join up with the trail which leads around the other side of the mountain to the Siete Lagunas.

Contrary to what many told us, the subsequent trail that leads down to the Siete Lagunas is actually marked, by the largish pile of stones shown in the following photo. (Note that on my EveryTrail.com page for this trip, I’ve included the two Siete Lagunas turn-off waypoints in the downloadable GPS track file.)

Traversing the mountain on the Trévelez side of the Mulhacén, at about 3,000 meters of altitude, we began closing in on the hidden Seven Lakes. It’s a stunning view from here, looking down the valley towards Trévelez. (Turns out, we were actually lucky to even be here! There was so much fog at the Alto Chorrillo, that the bus driver strongly recommended we spend the night at the Refugio Poqueira, instead of risking not finding the lakes and getting lost. We had a GPS though, felt adventurous, and decided to head to the lakes. It was the right decision, since we ended up climbing out of the fog at about 2,800 meters into gorgeous and stable weather.)

At about 7:30 PM, we crested the final ridge, looked down the steep slope into the gully below the Mulhacén, we saw our destination, Laguna Hondera, the lowest (and largest) of the seven lakes.

Although we sort of expected it, we were caught a little off-guard at how cold and windy it was. It seemed that the natural gully channeled cold winds directly off the Mulhacén down the valley towards Trévelez. We bundled up, quickly pitched the tent, and headed off to bed.

The next morning, we woke up about 7:00 am to an absolutely gorgeous sunrise over the valley.

We had a leisurely breakfast while watching the early-morning wild mountain goats and deer having a drink by the lake, and the other campers (two groups) waking and stretching by their tents. After packing everything up, we climbed out of the gully, and retraced our path back up the mountain, and back down to the Alto Chorrillo, where we caught the 12:15 am bus back down to the Hoya de Portillo.

What I really noticed about this trip, was the affect altitude makes. We only walked about 7km on Saturday, and 6km on Sunday, but I felt exhausted when we got back to the car. Of course, carrying much more equipment than usual had something to do with it, but even more so (I believe) the lack of oxygen at that altitude!

And, of course, it wouldn’t have been a proper trip to the Alpujarras, of course, without a stop off at Casa Julio, in Pampeneira for a good old Plato Alpujareño (this time with migas, instead of potatoes.)

Resources:

• Flickr photo set.

• Full trip details, including downloadable GPS track and waypoints. at EveryTrail.com:

Those of us working in the Marbella, Spain office of MakaluMedia are pretty darn lucky to have a super scrumptious cafe/restaurant—Mocca Marbella—just five minutes away, serving up fresh, seasonal international cuisine each day at lunch.

After getting to know charismatic Danish owner Micheal, we agreed to help him get a website built, with the idea that we’d work on it in our spare time, on a low-priority basis. Well, two years later, it’d pretty much become a monthly joke between Micheal and us. Spare time just never materialized!

So a few months ago, we sat down with Michael, and all agreed to bump up the task from “low” to “high” priority, and seriously set out to get it done. Brian quickly built public and administrative applications in Ruby on Rails, and then Alex came behind and worked his design magic.

http://moccamarbella.com

On the public side, we tried to capture the identity, simplicity and quality that have become recognizable trademarks of Micheal and his restaurant in the local community here. Just like his famous one-page menu, the website exists in a single page, with the daily specials rendered on a virtual chalkboard, just like the real one perched on the sidewalk out front.

Micheal updates the physical chalkboard each morning with the daily specials, and to carry that concept over to the website, we built a custom administrative application where he logs in and enters the same information to appear on the site. In addition, with a click of a button, the application sends a styled HTML email to all his subscribers.

We’re very satisfied with how the site turned out, and Michael loves it. Even though we can’t take on any new projects for a few months, it has also been gratifying to have gotten several business enquiries from Mocca clientele, due to the site!

Problemas con Vodafone, España

Llevo siendo cliente de Vodafone, España desde hace siete años. Durante los ultimos cuatro años, he tenido contratadola tarifa plana de 39 Euro/mes data plan, que me daba conectividad al internet desde mi teléfono.

En Marzo del 2008, recibi un SMS de Vodafone donde comunicaban: “la modificación de su plan de datos ha sido realizada con éxito”, sin embargo, nunca habia pedido ningún cambio a mi contrato.

Llamé a Vodafone, y mirando mis facturas, confirmaron que habían cometido un error, e immediatamente cambiarían la configuración al plan original que ya tenía antes. (Hay que tener en cuenta también, que cuando se llama a Vodafone, España, hay una conexión, via a VoIP con la peor calidad que se pueda imaginar, a un centro de llamadas en Argentina. Es torturoso intentar explicar el problema cuando apenas se oye nada.)

Vodafone, intentando reestablecer el plan anterior, no lo encontraban y no sabían como se llamaba. Uno podría imaginar que tienen almacenado un historial de los servicios de cada cliente, pero no. No sabían el plan que yo tenía. El plan mas usado se llama Navega y Habla donde te dan un número y una tarjeta de datos para el ordenador. Insistían en que esa era el plan y no podían entender que yo quería datos en mi teléfono y no el ordenador.

Estuve llamando durante una semana, intentando activar mi plan de datos anterior y finalmente lo hicieron.

Cuando llego la factura cobrada en Mayo, me doy cuenta que Vodafone me ha cobrado 400 Euro (mi consumo medio por mes es 60 Euro.)

Immediatamente llamé a Vodafone para que corrigiesen el error. Entonces me dicen que no tienen acceso a mi factura y que tengo que esperar hasta que reciba la factura por correo antes de llamar y explicarles el problema. Me informan que solo tengo 30 dias para comunicar cualquier queja.

Esperé, y la facturas dejaron de llegar por correo. Llamé de Nuevo para comunicar que no recibia las facturas y me prometieron emitir copias y mandarlas de nuevo añadiendo una nota explicando que aunque los 30 dias habian pasado, tendría derecho a reclamar el cargo en el banco dadas las circunstancias.

Estamos en Septiembre, no he recibido ninguna factura desde entonces. Ahora tengo acceso a las facturas on-line pero solo las dos últimas, no tengo acceso a ninguna antes de Junio 2008.

Vodafone no me permite ninguna reclamación hasta que no tenga la factura. He intentado preguntar en una tienda de Vodafone de mi localidad pero lo único que hacen es hacer la llamada a atención al cliente desde la tienda.

Aquí esta el gráfico de mi consumo sacado de la página de Vodafone. Vodafone no quiere reconocer que hay algo anormal durante el mes de Marzo, aunque reconocieron su error, y no me resuelven mi problema. Siguen insistiendo que necesita la factura.

No se que hacer ahora para solucionar esto. No quiero seguir llamando (no anotan los problemas, asi que como cada vez que llamo hablo con alguien diferente, tengo que contra la historia completa una y otra vez.) Como nada está escrito no hay evidencia de ningún acuerdo, como por ejemplo la promesa de enviar las facturas o el ampliar el plazo de reclamación.

Esto es realmente lo que yo llamo mala atención al consumidor.

Update: September 4, 2008

I discovered that the Vodafone Customer Service website allows you to submit help requests online. I pointed them to this blog article, and today go the following reply:

SI QUIERE SER ATENDIDO EN INGLÉS, DEBE CONTACTAR CON EL CENTRO DE RELACION CON EL CLIENTE, LLAMANDO DE FORMA GRATUITA AL 123 Y SOLICITANDO HABLAR CON EL DEPARTAMENTO DE IDIOMAS. A TRAVÉS DE EMAIL SOLO ATENDEMOS CONSULTAS EN CASTELLANO.

Translation (removing the ALL CAPS): If you want help in English, you’ll have to ring our call center and ask for assistance in English. We only provide email-based support in Spanish (Castellano). So it looks like I’m going to have to translate the story below.

Original Story

I’ve been a customer of Vodafone Spain for the past seven years. For the past four years, I’ve contracted their “flat rate” 39 Euro/month data plan, providing me with internet connectivity on my phone.

In March of this year, 2008, I received an SMS message from Vodafone, saying, “We have successfully made your requested modification to your data plan.”—a request, however, that I never made.

I called Vodafone, and after checking the records, they confirmed that they had made a mistake, and would immediately revert my configuration to my previous plan. (Note that when you call Vodaphone Spain, you are connected, via a VoIP connection of the worst quality imaginable to a call center in Argentina. Having a conversation with those people is excruciating.)

Turns out, Vodafone couldn’t figure out which plan I previously had. You’d think there’d be some kind of customer history they can access, but no. Today’s most popular plan is called “Navega y Habla” (Surf-n-Talk), where you get a phone number, and a data card for your computer. They kept trying to insist that was my plan, and amazingly, couldn’t seem to understand that I wanted data on my phone, not my computer.

After literally a week of calling them, and various attempts to activate my phone data plan, they finally claimed everything was back to normal.

Well, April arrives, and I find one morning that Vodafone has charged my bank account for 400 Euros for the March bill! (My average monthly costs historically are around 60 Euros.)

I immediately call them, to insist that something has gone terribly wrong and needs to be corrected. But get this—they tell me they don’t have access to my monthly bill, and that I have to wait until my paper invoice arrives before I can even call and talk to them about my problem! Furthermore, they tell me I only have 30 days from the time my bank account was charged to make a complaint.

So I wait…

Well, guess what? My paper invoices stop arriving precisely that month! Next month arrives, May, and I call back, explaining that my invoices are no longer arriving, and they promise to send another set of invoices, and make a note on my account to give me some additional time to issue my complaint.

We’re now in September, and I’ve still received no invoices. I now have access to Vodafone’s customer website, but only the two most recent invoices (June and July) are available; not the historical ones I need.

Vodafone refuse to speak with me until I have an invoice. I’ve tried walking into a local physical Vodafone store here, and they simply call the Argentina call center for me, from within the store.

Here’s the chart of my consumption, snapped from Vodafone’s own customer website. Vodafone won’t look at that anomalous month of March, in which they admit to having made a mistake, and resolve my problem. They stand firm on the statement that they won’t help me until I have a paper invoice available for that month.

I’m at a loss now how to resolve this issue now. I can’t bear to call them again. (They don’t note your problems when you call, meaning that you have to retell the entire story every time you call them, over that horribly bad VoIP connection. And you have nothing more than your own word as evidence of any past agreements made on the phone—such as a promise to resend your missing invoices, and give you more time. I would bet money that’s all by design.)

This is seriously, seriously bad customer treatment.

After breakfast, we drove back to the turnoff for Los Quejigales. We’d planned to park at Quejigales, and walk up to the lower peak on the route to the Torrecilla. However, about 5 kms out, we found the passage bar down, effectively shutting off the road. I guess the simply cut the access to the top in summertime.

After considering for a few minutes, we decided to drive down the dirt road to the right (where the Quejigales road was cut), and walk part of trail we’ve done in the past, Pinsapo de la Escaleretas.

About 500m into the trail, we decided to pass by the Pinsapo, as we’ve seen it before, and continue on another kilometer or so, to take in the breathtaking views of the valley below the Torrecilla.

As the trail got more densely covered in bushes with “pinchies,” we decided to head back to the car, and continue down the dirt road around the bottom of the Torrecilla, to a point where we’d seen, looking across the valley, a couple of cars parked. We’d hope to find there an alternative route up the Torrecilla that we could come try in the future.

Turns out, that part of the dirt road becomes very exposed (huge drop-offs!). When we got to the parked cars, it just turned out to be a couple of farmers that, for some odd reason, had chosen that point to build what looked like a small pig stye.

We carefully turned around, and headed back out the dirt road, and out of the Quejigales park.

Since it was about lunchtime, we stopped again at the Navasilla for lunch. Given that we love having breakfast there, we looked forward to see what they served up for lunch. The kids had meatballs, my wife had grilled fish, and I had a steak. It was AWEFUL! We were sooooo disappointed. The fish was salty, my steak seemed frozen and old, and the kids’s meatballs were about as bad.

Oh, well, note for the future: Navasilla for breakfast, and nothing more!

Resources:

• See all the photos in the Flickr photo set.

• See ALL the details (map, stats and more) at my EveryTrail.com page for this trip:

Pinsapo de las Escaleretas (Partial) at EveryTrail

Just a few hundred meters after the car, however, we spotted a turnoff towards a small peak, “Puerto Jacara,” and decided to shoot up to the top.

After a quick snack at the cool and windy peak, we headed back down and on around the mountain. About 3km later, we arrived at the beginning of the Sierra Prieta trail. (It’s not marked “Sierra Prieta”; you just have to know to take the trail to the “Puerto de la Madera”). Since at this point, we hadn’t arrived to the extremely exposed part of the road, we decided we’d need to return another day, drive to this point, and hike up to Sierra Prieta.

Rather than head back to the car at this point, we were intrigued to see what the “Fuente de los Hornaos” was, and since the sign said it was only 1km away, we decided to carry on. Turns out, after about 200m, you turn off from the dirt road to the left, and head down a well-marked trail, down another 800m to arrive at the Fuente:

We were disappointed (for reasons of aesthetics and thirst!) to find the fuente dry as a bone, but I guess that’s to be expected in August. That said, the views heading down to the fuente were awesome, especially the upshotting layers of rocks, that leave you pondering how they could have been formed.

We headed on back up the trail to the dirt road, and carried on the 3.7km back to the car, making it a 9.5km day in total.

We were very impressed at the beauty of the Sierra Prieta area. It is simply spectacular, and once again reminds us how fortunate we are to be living in such close proximity to the Sierra de la Nieves area of Andalucia, Spain.

Resources:

• View the entire photo set at Flick.

• View ALL the trip details, and download the GPS file at the trip page at EveryTrail.com.

Puerto Jacara & Fuente de los Hornaos at EveryTrail

My company, MakaluMedia, is supporting the joint efforts of the National Writing Project and Google, to provide a platform for the nation’s young people to express their opinions on issues that concern them to the 2008 U.S. presidential candidates.

From the NWP site, a summary of the project follows:

Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future is an online writing and publishing project that invites young people to write about the issues and concerns they would want the next president to address and, with the support of their teachers, to publish their writing for a national audience.

During the presidential campaign, U.S. high school teachers and mentors guide students through the process of writing a persuasive letter or essay to the presidential candidates. Students’ work should encourage the candidates to give attention to issues and concerns that students feel are central to their future. Topics are chosen by the students themselves to reflect their specific personal, regional, and age-related interests, and teachers will be able to support student writing and publishing in a way that most directly fits their local curricula and educational goals.

Through the Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future website (which launches in mid-September) and Google Docs , a free online writing tool, participating teachers can work with students to publish their work online for their peers, teachers, and parents, and for the public. And who knows, the future president may read their letters too.

Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future is open to U.S. teachers and mentors working with students ages 13–18. If you know a school teacher who may be interested in participating, please direct them to the following site.

NWP Letters to the Next President Information Page

The deadline for teacher registration is September 8, 2008.

Skip ahead a few weeks, and we were reminded of this conversation when we received the first delivery from a new service we’ve subscribed to. A group of local organic farmers have organized themselves into a cooperative, and for about 20 Euros per week, will deliver a large box full of locally grown seasonal fruits and vegetables to your door each Tuesday.

The above photo illustrates how different organically grown, untreated carrots can turn out!

Turned out that trail was very quick and easy to find, and after about 1.5 km, we decided to save it for another day, as the sun was coming out and getting hot on the exposed mountain over which the trail passes.

Turning around, we decided to return via the “Pico Juanar”, the second highest peak around here (after “La Concha”) at around 1,100 meters.

We’ve been to Pico Juanar several times in the past, but had nearly forgotten how steep the path is to the top. But it’s relatively short, and there was a foggy cloud over the mountain keeping the temperature down. Arriving to the top, the kids were quite happy to have made it (again). We snapped a couple of photos, and headed back down to the car.

Visit the Flickr photo set for the day.

View ALL the trip details at my EveryTrail.com page:

Pico Juanar at EveryTrail

The area around Yunquera, in Andalucia’s “Sierra de las Nieves” is famous (maybe even world famous) for its concentration of beautiful and majestic “Pinsapo” pine trees. Although we’ve been there several times in the past, we decided to head up there early this morning, to take in some of the cool mountain air.

We’d hoped to drive the jeep all the way up to the parking area at the Mirador de Luis Ceballos, and then hike the 11km route up to the “Pico de los Enamorados”, a peak we’ve yet to climb. But, unfortunately, the road was closed about 3km from the Mirador, due to high risk of fire. (The Pinsapo forest is one of the most carefully protected regions in Andalucia.)

So, we parked the car at the gate, and decided to walk the rest of the road up to the Mirador. It was an absolutely refreshing morning—cool, crisp, with a cloudy overcast to keep the hot sun away.

At the top, we had snack, and took some photos. One photo of me was quite interesting, as by chance the camera caught a yellow jacket bee flying right by my forehead when the flash went off!

Arriving back at the car around mid-day, we had lunch at our favorite “venta” just below Tolox, and then decided to take the dirt road home, from Tolox to Monda and down to Marbella. On the way, we stopped off to find another trail we missed before, “Sendero La Rejia” (where we played some pine cone soccer.)

Check out the Flickr set of photos from the day.

View ALL details of this trip at my EveryTrail.com page:

Mirador de Luis Ceballo at EveryTrail

The Alpujarras is a beautiful region on the east side of the mountains made famous by the Sierra Nevada ski resort, near Granada. On this trip, we stayed in the valley known as the “Barranco de Poqueira”, containing the mountain towns of Pampaneira, Bubión and Capileira. Here’s a map of the valley, with icons mapping the various photos we took:

Leaving Marbella around 6:30 pm, we pulled into Bubión, after a leisurely drive, around 9:00 pm. A quick “Plato Alpujarreño” (potatoes, eggs, peppers, and sausage) at a local restaurant, and it was off to bed.

Saturday morning, after some scrumptious “Buñuelos con Chocoloate” for breafast in Capileira, we drove the long dirt road up the valley, leaving the jeep at the “Hoya de Portillo”, and started the walk towards our day’s destination, the “Refugio de Poqueira”. The 8.5 km walk is quite easy with a gentle incline, and it took us about three hours to arrive to the refugio, at 2,485 meters altitude.

At the hut, we had a delicious (although surprisingly expensive!) lunch, including pasta, some kind of hamburger patties (which they said were their specialty), flan and an ice cold beer (for daddy!). For being mid-August, we were very surprised by the relatively small number of people at the hut. In total, we saw about 10 other hikers, most of whom were overnighting, planning to hike up to the nearby peaks of Mulhacén and Veleta the next day.

After lunch, we began the hike back down, which (going down hill) only took us about two hours. I was amazed that the kids did so well. (I think I finished the day much more tired than them!) In the afternoon, we strolled around Bubión, discovering the various grapevine covered terraces, cafes, nooks and crannies of the little mountain pueblo.

On Sunday, we spent a bit of time in the morning exploring the lower parts of the valley, around the abandoned town close to the hydro plant, where the two mountain rivers come together to form the Poqueira river.

Finally, heading home mid-day, we stopped in Pampaneira for one last superb Plato Alpujarrénos at the always good, “Casa Julio”.

Click to view a Flickr set of photos from this weekend.

View ALL the trips details on my EveryTrail.com page:

Refugio de Poqueira at EveryTrail

Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging