Road Repairs

Once again I've found myself without my camera when a great photo op presented itself. I really must go back and get one of the guys doing the road repairs. In the meantime, I'll try to describe the scene. The road between West End and Flowers Bay is dreadful, full of potholes, some quite deep, and I find myself having to go over that road rather frequently since our friend Kristin moved. We also have to go over that same stretch of road to go to Tabyana Beach at West Bay, a favorite snorkeling spot, so I was quite happy to see that the road was finally going to be fixed. When I saw the crew's set-up, I was really intrigued.

The road crew seems to consist of about four men. They have a dump truck full of gravel parked beside the road and just behind the truck they have built a fire. Over the fire is a 55 gallon drum split in half vertically where they are making and mixing their own asphalt. Near the fire is what appears to be a propane gas tank, another 55 gallon drum and a couple of wheelbarrows. One man tends the fire, one carts the asphalt mixture to the next pothole, one fills the hole and smooths the asphalt with a rake, and I guess the other man must have a hand in the mixing of the materials. It is a slow, labor-intensive process. They started working on it last Friday and haven't covered much distance, but what they have done looks good. I haven't noticed the usual acrid smell of tar, so I don't know what they are using in their mixture. If my Spanish was better, I suppose I could ask.

Don went over some interesting roads today, going back into one of the colonias to start working on the next house. A team from Canada came in yesterday and Don is helping them build a house for a woman from our church named Concepcion. I'll have to send the camera along with him one day. He said the roads get pretty rough when you start going up over the hills and, of course, they're not paved. Concepcion's house will be at the top of one of those hills.