I Love F'n Technology!

We couldn't use our GPS for the last leg of our drive to Bhanga Nek and Kosi Bay in KZN. There were no points of interest or town names to enter as a final destination. Luckily Tracy Woodland, our travel consultant at African Sojourns, furnished us with excelllent directions.

For the last hour we basically reckoned by compass over deep sandy roads collectively called the "Alley." The name never changed. The directions Tracy gave us basically said, "after you cross the bridge, you should travel in a north-easterly directions. At places there are a few sand tacks in more or less the same direction - it's usually best to follow the most used one. Basically all roads lead to Bhanga Nek." I was skeptical but as it turned out, it was entirely accurate.

Getting out of Bhanga Nek after four days to go home was another matter altogether. Luckily this time we did have a town to enter into our GPS and the satellites knew where we were. We got out without a hitch!

It just reminded me how much better travel is now that we have all this great technology. Vince and I used to spend an inordinate amount of time pulled over on the side of the road hunched over a panoply of Michelin maps trying to figure out where we were versus where we thought we were and how to converge the two realities.

We first used a GPS by accident really. After a holiday in Barcelona in 2005, we rented a car for the drive along the Costa Brava into France and over to Provence. Somewhere in France the speedy super highway we were on ground to a complete halt. We tried to listen to the radio to get a traffic report but we couldn't deduce any information we could use. All of a sudden, cars starting peeling off to the shoulder and taking the next closest exit off the highway. We wanted to do the same but weren't sure where they were going.

@ La Colombe d'Or, Saint-Paul-de-Vence

Just then we remembered that the Mercedes we'd rented had a built-in navigation system. We got out the manual and figured out how to find an alternative route and bypass the accident or roadblock, whatever it was. We picked up the highway again a few miles past the blockage and found out later that the cause had been a huge truck accident involving a car fire. The highway had stayed blocked for hours.

with Sue in Cornwall

After that I started renting GPS systems with all my cars on holiday. I am convinced that my friend Sue and I would still be searching today for Tintagel in Cornwall if it wasn't for the clunky navigation system we rented with our car. The directional signs were limited in that part of England to say the least.

I soon purchased my own GPS back in the USA to take on the road with me. We entered all the maps of Europe where we typically rented cars and forgot about paper maps altogether. Until on another road trip - this time with my niece and sister driving from Provence to Tuscany - I found out that the GPS is not foolproof either.

sunflowers in Provence

We had pulled over near L'Isle sur la Sorgue to take pictures of a sunflower field. I turned the car off but forgot to turn the GPS off as well. When we started the car again to leave, we found that the GPS had completely run down and needed to be rebooted. We read through the manual and found that there were no explicit directions telling one exactly how to reboot. (I knew it involved sticking a paperclip in some hole somewhere but I didn't want to choose the wrong hole and ruin the system.)

There was a website help line listed in the manual, but we didn't have a laptop or iPad with us (It was 2006.) So I did the next best thing when I have a technological problem. I called Vince! Unfortunately for Vince, he was in Sydney for work and I woke him up. Once he recovered, Vince looked up the instructions on the website in the USA from his laptop in his apartment in Australia and instructed me by cell phone on exactly how to reboot my GPS in a sunflower field in France. Talk about technology crossing the international boundaries!

After that, I realized I still need to bring paper maps with me as a back up when we travel. The GPS could die or get stolen, the satellites could go bonkers and the area could still be unmapped. Like most of Mozambique by the way. 

the boys in Roma

Speaking of cell phones, there was one other time in 2001 when cell phone technology saved the day. Vince was living and working in Europe again and I came over with our sons for a trip around Italy. The boys and I started in Venice and we traveled on our own by train down through Pisa and Florence and into Rome. Finally we were to take a train into Naples where we would meet Vince. Vince would be flying in from Switzerland, renting a car at the airport and picking us up at the train station in Naples in order to whisk us all off to the Amalfi Coast for a week. Sounds easy, right? What could possibly go wrong?

Now there are five train stations in Naples and I had given Vince precise instructions on how to get to the correct station of our arrival. Of course when we got out of the station, there was no Vince. I did not have a cell phone at the time. Vince had one but the last time I saw him, his American-made phone did not work internationally. It had been on his list to remedy but it was quite a drama to make that happen. (A longer story for another day.)

Pisa decked out for a regatta

Anyway, my older son Alex somehow figured out the archaic phonecard system. We broke off the corner of the card and I used it to dial Vince's cell phone from the pay phone inside the station. Miraculously Vince answered it! He had managed to get his cell phone to work internationally just minutes before he took off for Naples. (But even as he was in flight from Switzerland, he wasn't sure it would actually work once he landed in Italy.)

I found him waiting patiently at the central train station in the middle of Naples while we were unfortunately on the outskirts of Naples at another station somewhere in "there be dragons territory" off his paper map. I gave him the exact name and location of our station and he said he'd figure something out. We had another slice of pizza and proceeded to wait some more for him to arrive.

Cleverly, he used a very non-technological method to rescue us. He hired an old school Neapolitan taxi driver to lead the way across town to our station! They settled on a price and Vince gave him half when they left and promised to give him the second half only after they arrived. The taxi driver had a little fun with Vince too. Vince had to stay on his tail at excessive speeds running stoplights and driving up curbs onto sidewalks in order to keep pace.

Back at the train station, our jaws dropped when out of the blue we saw this taxi cab screech to a stop right in front of us followed in very close pursuit by another car who had to slam on his brakes so as not to rear end the first. It was Vince! Vince handed the cab driver a wad of cash and off the Neapolitan went.

"Who was that cab driver?" I asked. "I'll tell you later," he replied.