Tuesday, September 09, 2008

A "sinking" ship, NO a "sinking" bus!

One of the funny things that happened while the tour group was here was that the bus that took us out to Galleria Atotonilco sank in the muck from the receding Rio Laja.......... I NEVER use buses for my tours because as small as the streets are of San Miguel and the remote areas we travel to, vans are the way to go. But on Sunday we were traveling with the Bibliotecha on their Home and Garden Tour to see two magnificent homes of folkart.....thanks to Jennifer Hamilton, who organizes the weekly tours and her graciousness to work with me when I have a group in town.

As we arrived at this home in the country I marveled at how close it was to the Rio Laja and someone commented that yes, the water had been almost up to the house. Not thinking anything of it, we all went in to see the collections and when we came out to get on the busses (there were four) - this was the sight. One bus trying to pull another bus out with a rope.
A nearly toothless man came out of a shed with a shovel and a bag of lime and some wood. He and some other men shoveled mud out from under the front tires of the back bus, put the wood under, then threw lime under the tires of the front bus. He then stood back and grinned! It worked after about five or six attempts..........of course, many of the Americans wanted to give directions and instructions and I just said, "They know what they're doing" and they did!

The humor of it to me is that I work to cover ALL the bases and think of all scenarios to prevent something from going wrong and I see now that something going wrong ADDS to the memories!

1 comment:

Gin said...

The guys using old fashion ingenuity to get the bus out - I say only in Mexico.

I live on a arroyo that has many rocks. One day a girlfriend came by to visit and when she was leaving she backed over a huge rock and it was wedged under her axle. Before my husband could get there with a shovel there were at least eight Mexican fellows who lifted the truck up and pushed it off the rock. There were probably the same number of observers watching the show. I love Mexico!!