Taking a drive on the wild side

As I drove Ben to school this morning, we noticed that damage from last night's torrential rain was unusually apparent. We saw several minor rock and dirt slides, places where debris had been washed all over the roads, and lots of new potholes. The rivers were very full, and running tremendously fast - and clearly they had, in several places, come up out of their banks onto the roads during the night.

I decided to document some of that this morning . . . and then I got the totally brilliant idea to go home by a different route, where I would have to travel on dirt roads the whole way home. That, I thought, would assure me of some especially impressive photo opportunities. It might have been wise to consider the fact that my original route of the morning did not require me to actually ford any of the rivers, and this route would . . . but that didn't occur to me until a bit later. And, really, what's the fun of living in Honduras, if you're not willing to take on the occasional adventure, right? LOL

It turns out that the dirt road has recently been graded (since the last time I used it), and most of it did not experience much erosion from the storm last night, and is still very smooth. Good thing I had some rivers to ford, for better photo opportunities!

(Click on the photos to see a larger version.)

This spot is some pretty rough driving!

The road heading down to the river took a beating.

Here's one of the three rivers I had to ford on this trip. On a normal day, none of them are worth a second thought. 

Closer view of the water flow - making me nervous that the concrete bed of the ford might have suffered some damage. Did it? I don't know - the part my wheels touched was okay, though.

Normally, during the rainy season, the water is about 1/4 as wide as this

Closer look at the flow of the water I was preparing to ford. It's not so very bad, though I do get nervous when I can't see the state of the ground at the bottom . . .  

This is where I turn off the main road, to get home

Not very clear in this photo, but the little "ditch" the water created, between the main road and my road is about a foot wide there, and probably around a foot deep. I  hugged the left side of the turn, to avoid it. 

A spot on the side road which keeps getting larger, as the rainy season progresses . . . 

Yeah, I'm hoping not to slide down there . . . 

I picked up these hitch hikers on their way to school.

We have several months of rainy season still ahead of us. Things may get interesting. With Ben in school now, I don't have the option to just stay off the roads.