Since I have arrived I have gone on walks to reconnoiter the area and get a feel for where I am. I know that I am on a small island and the beach should be within walking distance. Apparently it isn’t. Today for the first time after 3 walks and 5 hours of searching I hit water. I wouldn’t swim in it, but I found the edge of the island. From there I could see plenty of nice beaches. However, after 2 hours of walking wasn’t going to try and walk all the way to the nice beaches a few more kilometers away.
Now there are taxis that could take me around instead of walking. In New York, Boston, even Denver you have to work for a cab. Keep your eyes open and run out into the street to stop the damn things before they blow by you. Here they track you down. Every minute a horn goes off and a man on a motorbike in a red vest (denotes a taxi) is offering you a ride. Sometimes it seems they are going to run you down. Then they can say, “Now your legs don’t work, you want taxi?” You get used to turning them down pretty quick. Far less often someone would pull up in a car or pickup and offer you a ride. Damn taxis just won’t quit.
After three hours of walking today I was dead tired. The heat and the humidity had won. I was ready to take a taxi back to my hotel. A man pulls up in his car, young kid on the front seat and offers me a ride. I jumped in and he took me the three kilometers to the store near my hotel. After a minute or two I realized that he wasn’t a taxi at all. He was just a nice person. Apparently all those people in cars who had pulled up to offer me a ride were also nice people simply offering me a ride. Now I realize that you have to be careful but damn it would have been nice to catch a ride a few of those times that I had been out walking. It will be nice to know in the future if I want to hitch a ride I don’t even have to put out my thumb. I only have to keep walking and wait for someone kind to pull over and offering me a ride.
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