Only in Mexico!

Ah, sunset.  The end of another great day.

The pale tones of dusk - mauve, light pink and pale orange – are shouldered aside by the setting sun. A blaze of deep orange, red and purple colours the western sky as another great day is coming to a close. I pour two glasses of our favourite white wine and ask Lawrie to join me on the upper street-side deck for a sunset drink.

“Be right there! I just have one small job I want to finish,” he hollers back. Okay, no worries. I put his glass of wine back in the refrigerator and headed up to the deck. Peace!

Concrete pumper truck arrives

And then it starts.

Across the street, a concrete truck and a concrete pumper truck pull into the seldom-used school basketball court. Several months ago, the local government, in conjunction with school administrators, decided the basketball court needed a covered dome, and now the construction has started. Two sets of air brakes sigh, the hydraulic mechanism starts up as the pumper truck extends its four-sectioned boom out over the length of the basketball court. Nope. Too great a distance to be efficient. The operator retracts the pumping mechanism and moves the truck closer. Okay, let's try again. More noise and shouts as the crew positions the pump's spout and begins spewing concrete into numerous foundation forms.

Municipal worker removing a loose wire

A few minutes later, a municipal bucket-truck stops outside our house, reverses backwards into the thick traffic to stop mid-lane while a worker removes a low-hanging wire; all the while, the truck's reverse alarm is incessantly bleating. 

Beep, beep, beep, beep. 

Our road is currently extra busy with traffic because it is the only route open to drive from one end of the island to the other. The road on the western side of the island is closed for two or maybe three months, more or less, for re-paving.

I lost my sandal

While the municipal truck has nearly blocked the north-bound lane, a woman driving her two children on a moto suddenly stopped in the south-bound lane. Her young son had lost his sandal. Now the non-stop traffic weaves and dodges around a small boy, the back end of the moto, and the stopped municipal truck.

"Be right there, I just have one small job to finish."

But wait, there's more. My handyman husband fires up his hand-held grinder, preparing to clean rust and corrosion from our gas stove burners.

Sparks fly. Particles of old paint and rust float upwards, settling in my lovely glass of chilled white wine.

Noisy dump truck

The last assault on my peaceful sunset enjoyment comes in the form of a large, beaten-up dump truck that rumbles past with a cheeky blast of his Jake brake, the engine retarder, producing a loud, unnecessary blast of noise that is the equivalent of a middle finger salute.

Eventually, everything quietened down. The municipal workers removed the fallen wire, the young boy retrieved his sandal, the traffic thinned out, and across the street on the basketball court, the construction workers finished up for the night.

Working on the foundations for the new dome roof.

Even Lawrie eventually finished his noisy repairs and joined me with his glass of wine, but by then the sun was tucked away in bed for the night.

Tomorrow there will probably be another colourful Caribbean sunset. We'll try again to enjoy our peaceful, end-of-the-day ritual.

Hasta luego

Lawrie, Lynda, Sparky and Thomas

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