Thursday, as usual was our day off. We decided that instead of going into town early to eat lunch and buy groceries, we would instead leave in the afternoon to go see a movie and eat supper together. We got to the mall only to find that half the parking lot was being taken up by the circus. There was little parking because of that and because of all of the people that were coming early to buy tickets for the circus. We foolishly thought that the wait for the movies would not be bad, but the line was very long, and for a while only one person was working the ticket booth. We got our tickets for the 3:20 movie at 3:35 after waiting in line for only 30 minutes. Haley and I went on in, and Matt went to the equally awful line to get a drink and popcorn.
After the movie, we headed downstairs to eat. It seemed that every person in Tegucigalpa was in that mall that afternoon. The TIGO, CLARO, and HONDUTEL stores each had lines trailing in front of 4 stores so people could make sure their numbers were registered before yesterday's deadline. Fortunately, the restaurant we chose was not as slow moving as everything else in the mall that afternoon. Hondurans generally do not eat at 5:30, so we were just about the only ones at the wings place except for a few people at the bar.
After eating we bought a few groceries and headed home. I have never in my life been so ready to leave a mall. It was so crowded, and I just wanted out of that mess. At that time of day it should have only taken us an hour to get home, but it took much longer than that. In between the airport and our exit, the one that goes to Chuloteca, we were in standstill traffic for over an hour. This is only a 2 mile strip of road. It is common for the traffic to be bad for one reason or another, but when we got to the reason why, I can honestly say I have seen nothing that compares.
After a while of inching along, we saw a couple people get up on the sidewalk to try to drive past whatever was blocking the traffic. Matt got mad and said they were just going to make the problem worse when they tried to get back into the line of traffic. Many people were getting out of their cars to try to figure out exactly what the problem was. We were all stuck going nowhere.
A few minutes later, more and more cars started getting up on the sidewalk as a means to getting around the traffic. Eventually, even Matt decided it was time to do the same. The closer we got to the wreck, all we saw was 18 wheelers and other big trucks that simply could not pass with their drivers standing on the road just talking. We continued on the sidewalk until we got to our exit. At the exit we saw in one lane a wreck where the people were waiting on the traffic police to come. Honduran law states that if you are going to call the traffic police, you cannot move your car from the scene of the accident, even if it blocks traffic. In the other lane there was a broken down 18 wheeler. Therefore, both lanes were blocked, no one in those lanes could move their vehicle, and people were stuck behind them both for miles. Sometimes we get so frustrated with the things that happen on the road. Sometimes, all we can do is laugh.
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