A Day Trip to Port

By Port we of course mean the capital city of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. It is the largest city in Haiti with a population of about 2 million. Like any large city it has lots of people, plenty of traffic snarls and you can buy pretty much anything you might want. But unlike a big city in the United States it also has cows crossing the road, streets that remind you of motocross racing and poverty visible everywhere you go.

Our day trip to Port usually starts around 8AM. The trip takes about 1 1/2 hours depending on traffic. Saturday is little market day with pretty much every town along our route having folks selling goods. The highway is good in some parts, not so good in others. But it is the busses and 'tap-taps' that hold us up.

Today we had some errands to run in Petionvil which is up the side of the mountain on the south side of Port. Then back down the main road Delmas with stops at a couple grocery stores. An interesting sight this time around was a chain-gang of men putting a cement roof on a 4-story building. They were passing buckets of cement up the ladder to put onto the roof.

 

We also stopped to have lunch at Epi D'Or, a well known hangout for ex-pats. We met Randy & Karen Lodder who work with the Canadian Reformed Churches running a school program. We spent a bit of time at the place they are house sitting. The big dogs belong to the owner :)

By 3PM or so it is time to go home. The kids are such troopers and rarely complain about these long days in the hot car. In August and now early September most days are around 34 degrees Celsius (93 degrees F) with high humidity.

But our adventure wasn't over yet. While in Port the rain had been falling on the mountains that shadow Route Nationale 1, the highway north we travel to and from our home in Kaliko. And just north of Cabaret traffic slowed to a crawl yet again. This time it was water flowing like a river across about 1/4 mile of road. Some cars and busses were stuck, others pulled over to lighten loads. We got our chance to go through and this was the scene:



The water and mud was pretty deep. The picture at the top of this post shows one of the young boys helping trucks navigate the mud and water. It had not stopped flowing. We are thankful for our Land Cruiser that made it fine! And that was our day - now safely home.