I broke my last 500 peso note buying beer for the mechanics who did a great job of fixing my car in Nagua today, which meant I didn't have the peaje to take the new highway home. So instead, I drove to Sanchez to take the roller-coaster route over the mountains to Las Terrenas. I had no one in the back seat, so I stopped to pick up two women, who magically turned into three women, one pregnant, a two-year-old, a baby, and all of their kit. Please don't eat in my car I said, after I noticed a milk bottle and a bag of food.
My little Accord was starting to heat up a little from hauling 500 pounds of Dominicans over a mountain pass at lunchtime, so I turned off the AC and kept up a good head of steam, so to speak, to keep air flowing over the radiator. Which means, essentially, that the passengers do a little bit of the old Star Trek maneuver, the one where they tilt the camera and people run to and fro. I wasn't going as fast as the guagua, which always passes me and is the local equivalent of NASA's vomit comet. I was having fun changing gears, passing livestock, tapping the horn, and generally, I thought, driving like a champ. Then I heard parar por favor. I pulled over and right away one of my passengers, the pregnant one, was blowing chunks all over the hot asphalt. Well, I thought, at least she got that out of her system. Off I went. Within five minutes, my gf had unbagged three grocery bags and handed the bags over her shoulder. We were all enveloped in a deadly sour miasma. We stopped again for a second clean-up. One bag later, the nightmare was finally over. They staggered out of the car looking like they'd just auditioned for Jackass IV. Someone had puked all over the two-year-old and he looked like the survivor of an industrial accident at a cheese factory. He was too defeated to even cry. This was a trifecta.
My little Accord was starting to heat up a little from hauling 500 pounds of Dominicans over a mountain pass at lunchtime, so I turned off the AC and kept up a good head of steam, so to speak, to keep air flowing over the radiator. Which means, essentially, that the passengers do a little bit of the old Star Trek maneuver, the one where they tilt the camera and people run to and fro. I wasn't going as fast as the guagua, which always passes me and is the local equivalent of NASA's vomit comet. I was having fun changing gears, passing livestock, tapping the horn, and generally, I thought, driving like a champ. Then I heard parar por favor. I pulled over and right away one of my passengers, the pregnant one, was blowing chunks all over the hot asphalt. Well, I thought, at least she got that out of her system. Off I went. Within five minutes, my gf had unbagged three grocery bags and handed the bags over her shoulder. We were all enveloped in a deadly sour miasma. We stopped again for a second clean-up. One bag later, the nightmare was finally over. They staggered out of the car looking like they'd just auditioned for Jackass IV. Someone had puked all over the two-year-old and he looked like the survivor of an industrial accident at a cheese factory. He was too defeated to even cry. This was a trifecta.
