The wrong side of the road

Thursday March’s 22nd, twenty eighteen

You get used to the fact that they drive on the wrong side of the road in the Bahamas. When you get to the curb normally you look left then right, or at least left then start across then right. You better reverse that here or you get mowed down. Today we had to get some groceries and that involves using the marina’s courtesy car. The car here is a Nissan Note, a small car with the steering wheel mounted on wrong side.

Outwardly the car seemed to be in good shape. We jumped in and turned on the air conditioning and hot air enveloped us. That continued until we shut the unit off and opened the windows. Think left, I kept saying in unison with ML who was suggesting left, left…LEFT. At the first intersection I thought I best signal and I turned on the windshield wipers. With no rain in sight I assumed windshield wipers must signal a change in course. After a one-sided discussion with ML I found the signal lever where the wiper lever should be. The rest of our trip on a sunny day involved the periodic use of wipers and intermittently signals.

For those of you who have not driven a right hand side drive car, the pedals are normal, gas right foot brake (if needed) left foot. The left turns are freaky, my brain wanted to put me in the right, well correct lane…

We managed to visit two grocery stores. The one nearest the marina was a new grocery store and was boggling for us having been in the Bahamas for three months. We stood in the produce section and just ogled the fruits and vegetables. There were no empty spaces anywhere. There was asparagus through zucchini. There were bananas, bananas had been elusive in the Exumas. They had all manner of things and stuff. The prices were still outrageous but they had stuff.

We made it back to the marina even though I drove into the wrong lane at the security gate. The guard moved the pylon and everything went well after that. The marina manager asked if the car was in one piece and I reported that the heater worked well.

We have to put on some water today and get the boat ready to leave. I’m not sure how this will turn out we are in quite close quarters with a headstrong vessel with a single sense of where she wants to go. I will report on the exit tomorrow. I will start with coffee and work into rum to prepare for our journey.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.