They call them ‘mules’ round here. Motorised golf carts. They don’t even have windscreen wipers. Kawasaki 600 cc engines nicked off a motorbike and shoved under the seat of a buggy thing. 4-wheel drive, for the beaches, sounds like a lawn mower but isn’t quite as fast. But even at about 25mph (no speedo, no idea) it only takes about 40 minutes to circumnavigate the entire island of Providencia, so how much faster do you need? The answer to which is always: as much as I can get. But heh, its the sleepiest of sleepy places, even I can cope with the lack of horses under the… seat. Best of all though, there is no concept here of ‘parking’. None whatsoever. There’s as many traffic wardens on the island as there are IFAs. The same number as ‘formal dress hire’ shops. When you arrive where you’re going, you just stop. That’s it. No restrictions, no laws, nothing. As long as you’re not inside someone’s house of on top of a child, its cool. None of the ‘mules’ have license plates, most of the cars here don’t either. And the motor-bikes, the majority vehicle on the island, would appear to have the basic minimum to make them go and they’re mainly about 25 to 40 years old. When did you last see a ‘Honda 50’ on the streets? And if you’re under-50 you won’t even know what I’m talking about.

But its vastly liberating having no regulations, no rules, no nothing. We saw a mother and her 3 children on a motor-scooter. People with babies. A passenger holding a jack-hammer on the back of a bike. And not a helmet in sight. Three people riding a scooter, all on their phones. Its like going back to a former time in evolution. A simple time when as long as you weren’t hurting other people then anything is fine. Because there just aren’t that many vehicles of any description on the roads.

I did manage to get told off though. I needed to put petrol in the ‘mule’, as opposed to hay, and I drove past the petrol station before I realised. Its the only one on the island. So, the road inevitably being empty, other than lizards, who also don’t wear licensee plates, I backed up a bit and drove in. Ok, it was the ‘out’ side but fuck me there was no other car, nor bike in there and the road was empty for 5 miles in each direction. But the garage dude told me how dangerous this was, I could have driven into someone coming out!!! There’s no-one here to come out! I wanted to shout. But didn’t. Show the man some respect. At least while he was shouting in Spanish.

The official language here is Spanish, obvs, its Colombia, innit? But everyone here speaks Caribbean patois, exactly the same as they do in Jamaica, Barbados and all the others. Which is a strangulated, stretched and herniated version of English. Which consequently, everyone speaks too. Making life much easier for us Spanophobic linguists. Also making it harder when you drive in the ‘out’ road of a petrol station. Cos you can’t pull the ‘no habla’ card.

Lovin’ the island life. May grow some dreadlocks and stay. I’d need Lila here. To carry on my motorbike. Can’t see her mum having any issues with that.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx