cabarete road works
After seeing the photo I could not resist posting my addition to the idiot drivers, this tme in Cabarete.
As many of you know, trying to drive through Cabarete is a nightmare at the moment due to all the road works..I guess I should pause at time and question the local authorities as to why the hell did they not do all this work BEFORE they put down our nice new road, but that would just be wasting my time!!
So there I am, sitting in my car in the middle of Cabarete, just in front of Onno`s, expecting a long wait to go to Sosua. The line up behind me probably goes back to Pro Cab and now the traffic are starting to come from the other direction...great I think, only about another 10 minutes to go...well that is what I thought...until I see another car coming up beside me facing the same direction, a taxi driver of course! Then there was the Pied Piper effect, about another 20 cars are following him. The first vehicle to come from the other direction was a gas tanker, and he is suddenly faced with 2 rows of traffic at a standstill...mmm, I think, this is going to be interesting! So the taxi driver tries his best to fit his Toyota Corolla into the gap between me and the car behind me, which was about 2 feet. Now, excuse me if I am wrong, but the last time I saw a Toyota Corolla they were considerably longer than 2 feet, but then I remebered that the driver was Dominican, and so anything is possible, right? Well, he succeeded in bumping me and the car behind me, and still thinking it was possible to squeeze his car between us he actually accelerated, pushing me forward, almost hitting the truck in front of me. By this time the gas truck is right by my side, honking his horn like there is no tomorrow, and there is also an ambulance about 8 cars behind obviously trying to get to an emergency. Well, we sat there for about 30 minutes and nothing happened, with the exception of a large number of Dominicans shouting and screaming at each other, the odd one or two saying hi to a friend or family member..blah blah blah. Then, a miracle happened, a police man arrived...and here I thought they were all at the car wash drinking, but he looked at the traffic and then walked off in the other direction...probably to tell all his other police buddies about the commotion and to sit down and and have a few more shots of Brugal to discuss what they were going to do about it. About 20 minutes later, two cops arrived and finally started doing the obvious, making all the idiots that were trying to overtake, reverse. This took another 20 minutes, and no doubt a few scrapes and bumps as Dominicans can?t drive forwards in a straight line, let alone reversing! And then we started to have movement...going in the other direction that is. We sat there for another 20 minutes until I finally got out of the car to see what was happening. Well, another taxi drive decided he wanted to turn around, and that is exactly what he did...after about 10 minutes!
Shortly after the congestion was over, and it was our turn to move forward. After finally passing all the road works and getting out towards Ocean Dream Plaza there was another traffic jam. It looked like a female foreigner had had some sort of accident, not sure if it was a motorbike or something, but of course there was about 20,000 Dominicans crowded around the poor girl, probably wanting to see some blood and gore. I hope that this girl was OK...it was obvious that this ambulance that was behind us earlier was trying to get to her, and thanks to the dumb drivers this poor girl had to wait.
So this taxi driver, wanting to get to his destination quicker, actually got him and his passengers, along with everybody else, there about an hour later than if he had actually waited in line.........moral of the story, ?patience is a virtue?...especially in this country.