That they gave me a car implies that they thought I might want to drive. But to be perfectly honest, driving here scares the willies out of me.
Here we are on a fairly typical two lane road on my way back from the office to the apartment. Obviously with the cars parked on either side of the road, the best you could hope for is two really skinny cars side by side. In practice, the street is a single lane until you get to the corner. The walls on either side of the road create an interesting problem at the corner since you can't see what's coming.
[The argument goes like this. For the majority of humans, the right hand is the stronger, more coordinated hand. If you the steering wheel on the left side of the car as is typically done in countries who drive on the left hand side of the road, the right hand is trapped in a space of just a few injuries unable to do much more than hold the steering wheel. All the tasks that must be done toward the center of the car, everything that involves gear shifts and the center console must be done with the weaker, less coordinated left hand.]
Park a car of two on one side of the road and you can get a sense for how narrow the street is and how much fun driving here can be. And just a bit up the road is my personal favorite road design feature: the round-about or traffic circle.
I found this video online taken by someone riding a bus near my part of Port of Spain. The Pizza Hut is right at the corner where my apartment is. He added some nice, local music as well. Enjoy.
Note in the later part of the video that the bus drifts across the dividing line between the lanes with oncoming traffic. This is actually fairly common. Whenever someone decides to stop or park on the narrow roads, then everyone else gets squeezed down into the remaining space. Most of us slowdown when that happens preferring the slow speed head-on collision.
