Spanish Lens in Web3
Posted on May 27, 2022
I started minting some of the images of Spanish Lens into NFTs that can be bought in foundation.app and in Open Sea. These are the images that have been minted so far. New images in this collection and new collections will come soon. With every NFT bought, I am sending a 40×40 cm printed image in fine art photographic paper.
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LAPD. LA, California
Posted on April 26, 2022
Back on the road, this time on a business trip to LA. It has been a long time since my last business trip and it was a mixed feeling. On one side it is exciting to see new places and meet colleagues I have never met before. On the other side, I have to overcome the sloth of the long air trip that once I enjoyed so much. LA doesn’t disappoint the visitor. Too many things to see (too few time to see it these days). A random walk around Downtown LA after lunch with a friend and you can get a lot of good pictures. Finally, the trip is worth.
The edge of the world. Saudi Arabia
Posted on February 13, 2022
Arrived at this place and couldn’t see anything. The mist and the dust erased the horizon. None of us could see what was down the cliff. The magical landscape surrounding us and erasing time and distance. Lost of sense of reality, any misstep and would disappear in the white cloud below. Suddenly, a ray of light started to show the huge plain below. Traces of water flows, dried by years without rain. Few bushes remained alive. The land of scarcity, the search for survival.
Stages 10 and 11: End of trip. Back to Dubai
Posted on February 5, 2022
04.02.2022 – 05.02.2022
The sunrise is again very beautiful with the sun coming out behind the mountains in a quickly changing cloudy sky. It is windy and cold, but I manage to get some pictures of the sun rising from the top of crater in the surroundings of our camp.
It is a long journey to Dubai that we will do in two stages. We leave our camp in the “real middle of nowhere” early morning. The night has been cold, but a bearable cold. We head directly to our first stop in Riyadh, where we will stay for the night so that Marta can take her plane back to Madrid early morning.
Tired and worn out by the long days and short nights, we want to come back. However, at the same time, we would love to have more vacation days to keep on visiting more of this exotic country. We have left many things out of the original itinerary, but we will come back in some other occasion for more adventures. The next trip I would love to do will be to the Saudi side of Rub Al Khali. Let’s see if I can find companions up for that experience. Anyone interested and prepared, come along!
We drive Southeast to Medina and then we take the long and straight road East from Medina to Riyadh. We pass by Tamya mountain, a big table mountain, which is almost the only interesting point in the flat landscape. Around Qassim and Buraydah there are nice sand dunes, which would be worth riding with my desert driving crew, the Sandmasters.
We cross scattered desert storms as we drive along the Nafud desert. One noticeable thing on the road is that there are bridges for camel crossing from one side of the road to the other. Otherwise, there would be herds of camels crossing this highway.
We reach Riyadh after 11 hours of trip and 1,114 km. We have booked a hotel just fifteen minutes away from the airport to make it easier for Marta to get to the airport in the middle of the night. It is a proper hotel, not luxurious, but good enough and not expensive at all. Modern, a soft bed, a good bathroom, all we need to rest between the two long driving journeys.
A good and plentiful dinner in Benihana makes our day. Pablo was very excited for this. We deserved a treat.
The trip to Dubai is 1,000 km more. We leave before 8, completely restored after a good sleep and shower.
There is a huge sandstorm while we cross the Ad Dahna desert. As I wrote in one of the previous stages, these strong winds transport the sand from the Nafud desert to Rub Al Khali. We drive through the sand clouds for more than 400 kilometers, which makes it a really difficult drive.
It has been an amazing trip. Not just for the places we have visited and the local people we have met, but for the nice crew Marina has put together to come along. Thank you Marina for organizing this trip and for letting me and my kids to be part of it. I am very grateful for having found Ali to come along us, and again thank you Ali for all that you showed us. Finally, thank you very much to the rest of the travelers for your good mood, the pictures and the endurance you have all demonstrated. It was a pleasure to share this experience with all of you.
This trip is not for everyone. You need a lot of endurance and adventure spirit, as well as an ability to cope with uncertainty and resilience to uncomfortable situations. However, if you are ready to put yourself through the unknown with a flexible attitude, I highly encourage you to come and explore Saudi Arabia and all that this land has in store for the rest of the world.
Trip data
Al Ais to Riyadh. Total distance: 1,114 km; Total time: 11 hours; Moving time: 9 hours 35 minutes; Average moving speed: 116 km/h.
Riyadh to Dubai: Total distance: 999 km; Total time: 10 hours 12 minutes; Moving time: 8 hours 5 minutes; Average moving speed: 111 km/h
Playlist
Al Ais to Riyadh
- U2 – 18 Singles
- Van Morrison – The Best of Van Morrison
- Tribu X – Pirueta Radical
- Queen – Jazz
- The Rolling Stones – Tattoo You
- LCD Sound System – The Long Good Bye: Live At Madison Square Garden
- The Corrs – Forgiven, Not Forgotten
- Maribou State – Kingdom In Color
Riyadh to Dubai.
- Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin IV
- Pink Floyd – The Piper And The Gates Of Dawn
- Yes – Yessongs
- Crazy Heart OST
- Bananagun – The True Story Of Bananagun
- Buena Vista Social Club – Buena Vista Social Club
- Club Del Rio – Lejos Contigo
- Quincy Jones – Q’s Jook Joint
- Baby Driver – OST
Stage 9: Umluj (املج) and the Black sand dunes
Posted on February 4, 2022
03.02.2022
Another night in paradise for hot water and a proper bed, although the hotel is not up to a minimum standard. Very old and run down furniture, taps full of lime, carpet where your feet sink, hard as a stone bed and I will let you imagine the rest. There is hot water and that is essentially what we are looking for.
We depart from Al Wajh early morning, and we head South to Umluj, a small city two hours away along the Red Sea coast. The road along the coast is not very nice as you can only see the sea from afar with the exception of a few spots. We pass beside the entrance to the Red Sea Project, one of the stellar touristic destinations that Saudi Arabia is developing. It is an area full of islands and shallow waters that must be impressive for scuba diving and snorkeling in the vast coral reefs.
Umluj has a nice corniche overlooking the Red Sea. The different tones of blue of the sea, from the turquoise close to the beach to the deep marine farther away make the view very impressive. This coast is certainly worth visiting. We will come back here some day when these touristic developments are finished.
We want to buy some meat for tonight and get away from the omnipresent chicken, so we ask a couple of Egyptian guys who are finishing their lunch for some recommendations. They point us to a butchery that is close by, but the guy only has camel to sell, no lamb nor beef. Disappointed, the two guys offer to take us to a place where we can buy some lamb. We follow them for around 5 kilometers, and they come with me to ask the butcher for the meat. We buy two kilos of lamb chops and some kebabs. It is going to be a great feast tonight.
After finishing our shopping we head East to Al Ais, where we will find the black sand dunes. It is another volcanic area, packed with craters of old extinct volcanos. We roam around this volcanic sand area that has big flat plain lava fields . The black sand is more a fine gravel than the sand you see in the desert. The area is stunning, surrounded by the craters of the volcanos and all these lava fields with very sharp rocks. I am worried they will cut through my tires and leave me stuck here for some time.
We have been in many “middle of nowhere”places in this trip, but none like this “middle of nowhere”. There is no mobile signal for more than 25 km. We set up the camp, we take pictures of the cloudy sky in the sunset and we cook our dinner, which is delicious and leaves us full. After dinner, Marina shows us the footage that she shot with her GoPro going up and down the wadi yesterday. There are some amazing clips that we will be able to see in rewind when she shares them at the end of the trip.
Now our exploration comes to an end, and we start the way back home from this remote area. We are 22 hours drive away that we will cover in two stages. We will stop in Riyadh tomorrow night and the next day from Riyadh to Dubai. Around 24 hours of driving to cross the Arabian peninsula diagonally from coast to coast.
This trip has taken us to many remarkable and marvelous places, so much so that we have to leave out many other stops out of the itinerary. We were supposed to go to Tabuk, the Gulf of Aqaba and Neom (although I am unsure it can be visited). This may seem unfortunate, but we have saved many hours of car and a lot of land to cover so we have an incentive to come back to this incredible land. We feel somewhat fortunate to have this desire to explore Saudi even more.
Trip data
Total time: 8 hours 30 minutes; Moving time: 5 hours 34 minutes; Total distance: 374; Average moving speed: 67 km/h
Playlist
- Joe Jackson – Big World
- Lynyrd Skynyrd – The Essential Lynyrd Skynyrd
- Joan Manuel Serrat – Dedicado A Antonio Machado, Poeta
- The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty – OST
- Marcus Bonfanti – Shake The Wall
- US3 – Hand On The Torch
- Parcels – Day/Night
Spanish Lens 