Russian Roulette Leap Frog

What an apt description for traffic on CA2 here in Guatemala.  The highway is 2 lanes most of the way, with a solid yellow line that means, well, not much.  If there is even a remote chance that you might be able to get around the large truck in front of you slowing you down, you take it.  It really looks like leap frog, or maybe frogger.  The roulette part, well, you can only imagine.  Half the time we watched as cars got just to the front of the big truck and then had to zoom into the lane as an 18 wheeler came barreling around the bend in the other lane.  We, of course :-), were much more cautious (though I'm not sure that's saying much...)

We had a long ride home, being stuck behind numerous trucks.  The trucks made me think of our friends back home.  I thought "Gee, there goes a truck carrying bananas (literally tons of them) that our friends are going to pay too much money for."  I also thought of all our North American friends and family when we finally reached the safe road - safe for us, but would still be considered psycho by northern standards.

All in all it wasn't a bad drive.  The last hour we had to do after dark (thanks to the bananas and sugar cane) but we arrived safely.  Anyone who has driven our roads after dark understands the miraculousness of that.  The highway has no street lights.  Lights on cars are also relatively optional.  In that one hour we passed 16 cars that had either no tail lights or no head lights.  Then there are the random drunk people staggering around in the road, thankfully this trip we didn't see any of those (of course that doesn't mean they weren't there.)

We arrived home to a meal made for us by Maribel, our house helper.  She is the best, she even made a cake for Ken's birthday.  I wish I could clone her and give a copy to everyone I know.

On a sad note...we learned while we were gone that Ken's grandfather passed away.  Please pray for the Eisner family during this time of grieving.  Kenneth will be leaving Thursday to return to Canada for a week to be with his family.  Pray for safety for him, and also for the girls and I as we stay behind here.