It Floats

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The bridge over the Aguan river to Trujillo has been out for 8 months but nobody bothered to tell us. Hazel and I faithfully followed our map and signs showing us the way to a bridge that is no more. Here we were confronted with a backwards queue of a dozen vehicles waiting to cross the river on a makeshift ferry. I was dumbstruck. The scene before me was bizarre to the point of being incomprehensible. There must be a better way! The ferry was a glorified raft. It was a small metal barge perhaps 9 feet wide by 20 feet long with an ordinary outboard motor attached. It rode so low in the water that the vehicles upon it looked like they were floating across the river under their own power. Two vehicles at a time were backed (this explains the backwards queue) on to the barge via wooden planks that were laid down on the sandy riverbank each time the raft landed. The raft and its precious cargo of two vehicles and nervous occupants would then be launched out into the current to drift backwards until the right moment for the outboard to be fired up to drive it into the opposide riverbank. Unloading was a relatively straightforward process of driving off the raft forwards which I presume to be necessary because it might be impossible to back up the steep riverbank. When it was my turn to back the Scion on to the raft, I wanted to cry. I looked back to see how far I had to go but there was nothing to be seen but water. I relied instead on directions shouted in Spanish and a prayer that I would not see any fish swimming past the windows. I'm too old for this shit and I'm getting tired of it!

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