Broken Bridges

 On June 29th, I joined a road trip South of Iwokrama River Lodge bound for the Rupununi Savannas to attend a community meeting. We never made it outside of the Iwokrama Reserve though, since TWO truck accidents blocked the road along the way. A sad loss occurred at the first broken bridge-Moco Moco bridge. A young driver in his early twenties was driving an overloaded truck and the truck slid off the road into the creek where he was then trapped inside. A terrible loss. Hopefully this will be a wake up call for the Government to fix the bridges immediately and enforce standardized loading weights on trucks.

 Shot of first truck crash at Moco Moco Bridge where fatality occured. You can see from this picture the poor quality of the bridge-a repair constitutes placing pulled up planks back where they used to be nailed in.

Shot of damaged goods from truck at Moco Moco Bridge. Workers had no choice but to dump lost stock straight into the creek, an unfortunate result for the Iwokrama river systems.

South to North shot of collapsed truck

This guy didn't let all the food and supplies floating in the river-not to mention the body still in the vehicle-stop him from having a bath. He picked up a soap bar that was part of the damaged stock and started washing himself.

 
Second truck accident at bridge right outside the Iwokrama Reserve. Truck is carrying THREE TIMES the allowed weight. But, the bridge hasn't been repaired for over a year. This was the point where we had to turn around (two hours away from the River Lodge) since the bridge was 100% impassable.

 

This photo is Guyana in a nutshell for me. Typical laid back attitude. ALWAYS travel with a hammock, you never know when you will be stuck! 

Seeing the accidents and the frequency the bridges break down on this main highway through Guyana makes me so grateful for the road system and traffic enforcement standards back in Canada. When returning home, I will not only look at our smooth, paved highways in a different light, but will think again when questioning the amount of speed limit signs that saturate our roadways.