The previous mayor of our town, in his last-ditch effort to be reelected in the recent elections, offered to pave part of our road with concrete to win more votes. He lost the election, but the proposed road construction proceeded anyway. So for the past couple of months they have completely closed off the main road to our community (apparently they haven't heard of closing one lane at a time). They are sending all of the local residents and minivan buses on a 20-minute detour through a rural area on a narrow road that is only wide enough to be one-way, but is now two-way. This dirt/paving-brick road is at all times difficult to traverse and at other times treacherous, so we have been limiting our shopping ventures into town to every other week.
 |
| Notice the sign indicating a left turn to the detour planted in the middle of the community's main road. |
 | |
| There is a deep ditch on the right and a steep hill which drops off to the left. The paving bricks are wide enough for about 1.9 car widths. |
 |
| Here we have a similar wall of dirt on our side, leaving about one inch of space between our car and this bus as we squeeze by each other. |
The workers only ended up paving a very short length of the main road (a quarter of a mile) because they ran out of money, but now we are waiting for the community leaders to declare the new concreted section open for traffic. This waiting period was scientifically over several weeks ago, but Mayan tradition says to wait longer... so wait we shall.