There is only one main road that circumnavigates this island. There are many interior streets that run through the various neighborhoods. These are very narrow, made even more so by all the cars and scooters parked along them. Thus, the major flow of traffic travels the exterior road.
There is a stretch that runs in front of my house for about a mile with no speed bumps. This means that everybody gets a chance to try to burn the carbon out of their motors as they pass by. I guess I don’t mind, except for the ones with no muffler. There are no car inspections here. If it runs, you can get a license for it and drive it.
This is a normal construction truck. They usually carry sand to building sites or debris from building sites to the currently designed fill site.
This is one of our famous garbage trucks. On its’ way to dump its’ load at the garbage transfer site further down the road. The workers all ride on top, sitting on the garbage.
Finally we have our fire department. I think they periodically just take the truck out to give it a spin. Not much call for them since almost everything here is cement or cement block. 
There are quite a few houses scattered around made out of sticks and fiberglass roofing. In the three years that we have lived here, we know of only one fire on the island. And it was a doozy. Burned a nightclub and several businesses in the busy tourist section of downtown. It started in a nightclub exclusively for teenagers, the 12 to 19 crowd. It was on a second floor, made out of wood with a palm roof. It was made to hold maybe 100 people but on any given Saturday night, there were probably 300 or more up there. And one exit! It took less than five minutes for it to burn to the ground. Thankfully, it happened on a night it was closed. Otherwise, we probably would have had 300 funerals on the island. Shudder.
Ok, off to sit on the front porch, finish my coffee and watch the morning traffic roll by!
(Notice the electric wires coming into the house. Sometimes I wonder how it all works!)
There is a stretch that runs in front of my house for about a mile with no speed bumps. This means that everybody gets a chance to try to burn the carbon out of their motors as they pass by. I guess I don’t mind, except for the ones with no muffler. There are no car inspections here. If it runs, you can get a license for it and drive it.
Besides normal (and not so normal!) cars, we get motor scooters, foot traffic, golf carts full of drunken tourists, bicycles and TRUCKS! They are the worst. Most billow some kind of smoke from somewhere, not always from where you think it should be either!
Here is a sampling of the trucks that go by:
This is a normal construction truck. They usually carry sand to building sites or debris from building sites to the currently designed fill site.
This is one of our famous garbage trucks. On its’ way to dump its’ load at the garbage transfer site further down the road. The workers all ride on top, sitting on the garbage.
Finally we have our fire department. I think they periodically just take the truck out to give it a spin. Not much call for them since almost everything here is cement or cement block.
There are quite a few houses scattered around made out of sticks and fiberglass roofing. In the three years that we have lived here, we know of only one fire on the island. And it was a doozy. Burned a nightclub and several businesses in the busy tourist section of downtown. It started in a nightclub exclusively for teenagers, the 12 to 19 crowd. It was on a second floor, made out of wood with a palm roof. It was made to hold maybe 100 people but on any given Saturday night, there were probably 300 or more up there. And one exit! It took less than five minutes for it to burn to the ground. Thankfully, it happened on a night it was closed. Otherwise, we probably would have had 300 funerals on the island. Shudder.
Ok, off to sit on the front porch, finish my coffee and watch the morning traffic roll by!
(Notice the electric wires coming into the house. Sometimes I wonder how it all works!)
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