Rules of the Road

Mexican roads are weird. I knew that already but everytime I travel, something new surprises me (or scares me). At the weekend it was a dual carriageway crossroads (when do we have those in the UK?) where the crossing through the central reservation of the slightly more major road (indicated by the one with most traffic) required you to drive on the left, rather than the traditional right. Why bother to keep to the traditions if it’s going to be a pain.
Today, the surprise was road markings. The roads here rarely have markings and you can work out the number of lanes by calculating the number of cars that can fit in the allocated space and adding one. At night, the potholes and speed bumps are very difficult to see and, occasionally, it’s hard to work out where the road goes. Someone seems to have sat down and thought about this. The solution – paint the trees! So as I walked to work this morning, I noticed that all the trees and telephone poles lining the street were painted white to about shoulder height (or head height if you’re Mexican). Amusingly, there hadn’t been any attempt whatsoever to do a neat job and most of the pavement (where there it exists) was painted too. Splatter, splatter, splatter. Awesome.