Only 25 Miles To Go

As evening started to roll in, we pulled into Thomassique ending our six and a half hour journey. "How I wished we had a better transport vehicle," I thought to myself earlier that day as we had loaded up the huge old and long-retired army truck before embarking from Banica on what on what we expected to be a 2 or 2 and a half hour trip.

Banica resides in the Dominican Republic just across the border from Thomassique, Haiti. The actual distance is less than 25 miles. And yet the terrain and the extreme harshness of the road make the normal 150 minute trip seem like a life time. Two and a half hours in pelting summer heat as the truck bounces across the rocky road, slugs it way thru mud holes, crawls up hillsides that might make a mountain goat think twice. Part of the journey we travel the "International Highway". I can think of many names for that stretch of "road". "Highway" is not one of them.

This particular day the roads were extremely muddy after heavy rains. Since the roads are not properly engineered to provide drainage. Since they are dirt. Since they have no equipment to keep them level or to push mud off after a rain storm, bad things happen whenever it rains. We found out this day.

After going "off-road" several times to get around particularly treacherous stretches of quagmire the locals called a road, we met our match. We paid two locals to have them take down a section of their fence and let us drive across their property. And then we went back onto the road. And we sank. And sank some more. A good 3 feet of mud - enough that even our lion-hearted truck could not make its way thru.

The locals tried to dig us out. We tried to winch ourselves out, but the cable snapped. Finally hours later, someone managed to get a tractor to come our way. After several failed attempts and several nervous moments as the tractor itself seemed on the verge of getting trapped in the muck, the truck was pulled free to a rousing cheer from the hundred or so locals who were watching.

"We are home free!! What more could go wrong after that?!!" I thought to myself. As we hurried along, fighting our way thru new mud holes, struggling up steep hills, and finally bouncing over brutally rocky ground we heard a loud clank and the bed of the truck sagged sharply to one side. We pulled to a stop to discover that one of the rear truck springs had "busted" and the rear axle was coming detached from the truck!

Fortunately, our driver is an resourceful fellow. He managed to wrap a heavy iron chain around the dislodged axle and secure it well enough that we were able to limp the final half hour into Thomassique! We were leaking brake fluid. Possibly transmission fluid. The right side of the truck was resting on the wheels. But our magnificent beast had refused to die until it had us safely to our destination.

The next day we took an alternate route home. We got dropped at a river crossing. Waded that river, walked a mile to a second and larger river. Once there, we paid local men to take us across the river on make shift rafts. Safely on the other side, we hired 4 motorcyclists to take us the rest of the way back to Banica.

I was so bruised from all the bouncing that I couldn't sit normally for days. But despite its lack of beauty, its extremely bouncy ride, it's belching engine, I came to love that ugly old truck that day. No normal vehicle could have made that journey across that particular 25 mile stretch of road. Not the finest luxury sedan. Not a 4-wheel drive pickup. Not the dump truck that we passed which was buried to its bed in mud.

But as much as I now love that old green beast, I dream! How life changing it would be for the people who live here to have reasonably passable roads. To have culverts in sections with poor drainage. To have fill dirt, gravel, stone to fill in low trouble spots. To have equipment to maintain and repair their road. What a lovely dream it is to think of a 25 mile trip taking less than an hour!

Note: I have photos from the trip in my album: Haiti Adventure. The photos of the muddy road do not even come close to showing just how bad they were in "real life".