Thankfully, the fact that I’m only 21 means my brain still
has the capacity to remember even the earliest reaches of my youth. One such
memory that I share with many of my own generation and the ones that came
before me is my afternoons spent being educated in the rules of the road by
everyone’s favourite member of the vermin community...Tufty the squirrel.
Since those lessons (along with witnessing what happens to
squirrels that don’t quite have the same wisdom as our dear friend Tufty) I,
along with everyone around me, have had a healthy respect for the road and
traffic.
Despite what the paintings in the Manaus theatre suggest it
seems that Tufty never made it to the Amazon.
Every second spent on the roads, which seem to have been
modelled after the Grand Canyon, is a cacophonous mix of tooting horns,
shouting people, dodgy engines and squealing brakes. I half expect that at any
moment I’ll see Dick Dastardly and all his bandits from wacky races to come
ploughing down the street (not that I would even notice because it seems
everyone here got their driving license from cartoon network).
It is the only place in the world I have ever heard someone casually
use the line “it’s safer to just pull out whether someone is coming or not
because if you pause to avoid a side on collision you will just get hit from
the back”. The government have been kind enough to put stop signs anywhere they
deem necessary but believe me when I say they may as well have saved their
money and not bothered.
Maybe I’m making it sound worse than it is but to the
uninitiated its best just to do exactly what you see the locals do when it
comes to crossing the road; wait when they wait, walk when they walk and when
they run, pray!
Driving around town on the back of Marty’s motorbike has
certainly been an experience and it’s a great way to get around but Tufty, if
you are reading this, perhaps you wouldn’t mind coming out of retirement for a
while?
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