Road Work

Last July I wrote about "Public Works" or the road repair that was going on in our street. Well some of the same places are being repaired again as well as other places. But we are not the only street with road repairs underway in San Miguel. There are repairs all over the town. Right now in the Centro Calle Reloj is closed for a block for major road repairs. All along Mesones near the Bonanza Grocery store there are pockets of road repair. In Colonia San Antonio where we live there are several other streets also under repair.

Imagine two-way streets that are two cars wide with parking on the street, add in road repairs and you'll get an idea of the difficulty of getting around. Thank goodness we walk almost everywhere. But even with the walking you sometimes have to walk over a load of dirt that has been dumped on the sidewalk.

The process of road repair means that the men use pick axes to pull up the stones and they are dumped somewhere while the bed of the road is smoothed with dirt, then the stones are carefully replaced and more dirt is put over them to settle inbetween the stones. With 5-ton trucks, Coca-cola and Pepsi trucks, gas trucks, water trucks as well as cars and a constant stream of taxis passing over these rocks all day it doesn't take too long before the whole process needs to be done again. At least on our street we don't have buses....at least we don't have buses most of the time unless the traffic has to be rerouted for road repair.

We've speculated with friends why there is so much road repair going on now and the feeling seems to be that elections are coming up so the party in power needs some bragging rights. Sounds kind of like the USA doesn't it.