Street Repair

Coming from Minnesota, I am no stranger to road work. In fact, a common saying there says that we have two seasons.....winter and road repair. At times, I believed it too!

And here on Isla, it seems like the streets are constantly being torn up and repaired some how. Some of them over and over and over and over again.

So it was no surprise to me to see that Merida was going through the same thing. Most of the downtown streets are being torn up and redone. Since the streets downtown are one ways, it has caused some major rerouting problems. But the ones that have been completed and have reopened are really nice. They have made the sidewalks wider, which also makes them safer.

I stopped one day and watched them working for awhile. (glad it was not me in that hot sun!)

After the street has been torn up and the forms set, they start with a big, noisy cement mixer. One crew pours and levels.



The next crew follows behind finishing the surface.





This guy then throws what looks to be lime on the fresh(ish) cement and trowels it in.






Then comes the guy with the fun job. He gets to use the forms that stamp the image into the cement.






And finally, more noise. This guy uses this jack hammer device as a finishing touch. I would have thought that it would mess up the pattern, but it doesn't.

It was an interesting, well organized and run operation to watch. It would be good for some of the road engineers here on the island to go take a look at how things could and should be done.