They Say It Happens All The Time

As we have mentioned before when we travel north we have to cross over the Passion River by ferry.  The ferry is located in our town just a few minutes from where we live.  Usually we make it fun by rolling Cruz's window down because he likes to look out at the water or sometimes getting him out of the car and holding him on the ferry as we cross.  We most always take him out of his carseat and hold him in our laps as we cross just in case something happens.  Often we get to the ferry and it is temporarily shut down to refuel, work on it, or countless other things.  You cannot always count on getting to where you are going because it all depends on the ferry and how busy it is when you get there.  It can make your trip very aggravating.  Since moving here there have only been a few times we have seen a situation like we experienced yesterday but the locals say it happens all the time.

We planned to drive up north to have our vehicle serviced, buy groceries, and eat lunch.  We left a little earlier than normal, and thank goodness we did.  When we turned to head towards the ferry we noticed that many, many vehicles were backed up.  We knew something had happened.  We parked our car in line and David walked towards the river to try to find out what was going on.  This is what we found out-

On Wednesday afternoon a tanker truck had gone off of the back of the ferry into the river while it was crossing.  To shift the weight it is common for the ferry workers to ask the big trucks to drive forward as they are taking off and then back up when they are reaching the other side.  At times while doing this the trucks will over estimate and fall over.  It makes me nervous everytime we cross that this might happen while we are on there.  The above photo was taken fifteen hours later and you can still see all of the vehicles stuck on there. 

We got lucky that they had brought in another smaller ferry to use as a backup until the other one was up and running so we could continue on our trip.  I think they knew this was going to be a long process.  We have had to cancel a trip because of a similar situation because there was no way to get across.  The backup ferry did not arrive until Thursday morning so you can imagine how bad the traffic was backed up.  We waited our turn and then boarded.  The above photo was taken as we were crossing on the smaller ferry.  You can see the traffic on the other side waiting to cross.  It stretched a long ways down the road.

We waited a short while to cross back over to Sayaxche on our return home.  Once we crossed we drove down by the river to take a few more photos.  They had removed all of the vehicles off of the ferry and were trying to drain the water from it so that it would float again.   

This is a close up of it.  It was almost completely under water before we crossed back over and had drained out a lot by the time I took this picture.  You can see the water draining in the center of the photo.

This is a photo of the smaller, temporary ferry.

While we were down by the river I took this photo of a local dog cooling off in the water and watching all of the action taking place.  He sat very still and was taking it all in.

Although the ferry at times can be fun I do not think we will miss having to use it when we move from here.