Traffic Jam

We went out to lunch with some friends to a restaurant in a town about 10 miles from our place. There is only one road. On our way there we saw a lot of people gathered at one house, and our friends told us that there was a funeral. It was an elderly man given to drinking too much. He was walking home drunk the other night and was struck by a car. He was not killed by the car, but had a heart attack on his way to the hospital and died. The roads are very dangerous for pedestrians. There are no sidewalks, and it is also very dark, but people walk on the road, expecting cars to see them; however, it is very hard to see them in the dark, especially when you have headlights in the opposite directions, sometimes you just see them at the very last minute.

Anyway, on our way back we encounter the funeral procession. They were carrying the coffin on their shoulders for over two miles to the cemetery. They was even a band on the back. You can see them right by the yellow taxi. I took this picture from inside our car because I did not want to be too obvious. The problem was that, as I said, there is only one road. You can see how narrow it is. The funeral procession created a major traffic jam. There is a plaza behind those trees, and we were able to inch to the corner, go around the plaza and come out to the other side ahead of the procession. Otherwise, we would have been behind them for hours.

That is just life, at the beach...