Colon
Every day when we leave our Casas in the early morning, we are swept up into a current of people, all jockeying their vehicles into a river of motion. In every town there are mopeds, and horses and cars crowding the streets.
There are classic American Fords and Oldsmobiles from when the United States supported Cuba, Peugeots and Fiats from when Russia did, and some more modern cars from China. Many cars are emblazoned with insignia from other car manufacturers, so they basically call them what they want. I guess it keeps it interesting.
There are horse drawn carts, motorcycles, ancient Jerry rigged buses, trucks spewing diesel with their beds full and of people, motorized carts serving as taxis and bicycles.
I could write a chapter on the bicycles alone. Some are gas powered, some are electric, some have been around since my grandfather was a boy. Some have a small wheel on one half and a large on the other. Some have tall handle bars and some have squat wooden ones. Many have extra seats fastened on to the back rack or on the cross bar for both adults or children to ride as passengers. There are bicycle taxis and bicycles pulling carts. There are old men riding bicycles built for eight year olds and women riding tasseled Walmart specials.
Most of these bikes have seen several lifetimes of use, and I am amazed that they are still ridable and not collapsing into mounds of rust on the side of the road. There is a surprising lack of flat tires, and if one does occur, every down has a pinchador—a flat tire fixer.
Every day Weezie and I enter this fray and swim through the reving engines, potholes and honking horns, moving with and through the people, making our way to the country side.
With all that chaos, one might think that it is dangerous to navigate these streets, but it is quite the opposite. People drive slowly because of the potholes and the vulnerability of the various commuters. Cars and buses give little toots on their horns well before they approach a bike or a horse, with enough advance notice not to be startling and then they give as much space as possible when they pass. It looks crazy, but there is a pattern, and everyone seems to work together to get each other where they need to go. One out of twenty people in the United States has a car. Here it is only one out of 500.