Someone please pick my mom up off the floor.
Let me start from the beginning. Aimee, Mayela, and I were planning on getting up early and driving (in Mayela's car) to Jinotega. Since it grows some of the best coffee in the world, it naturally has some pretty good breakfast restaurants. So we didn't bother to eat anything that morning; we just hopped in the car around 8. However, just outside of San Isidro, we started to get pretty hungry. So we pulled into a roadside market in the nearby town of Sebaco.
The roadside market is actually more of a road-on market. Dozens of produce vendors line both sides of the Pan-American Highway, and sell food to the passing motorists.
So we stopped. On the highway. The Pan-American Highway. To buy oranges.
Just after we paid, Mayela pulled out of the stall (she had parked about halfway across the curbside lane line). However, at the same time, a 20 foot flatbed truck came screaming down the road in the opposite direction. In a vain attempt to avoid the bicycle-taxi in his lane, the driver crossed the yellow line, and brought the cab of his truck breathlessly close to our car.
I've been in dozens of near-crashes out here, and I've always been amazed at how well the local drivers can sneak their cars/trucks/buses past seemingly impassible obstacles. So, as scary as our fly-by was, it seemed to be just another Nicaraguan near-miss.
However, the truck did not stop with the cab. As the rest of the truck passed us, we noticed the rear axle getting closer and closer to us (and remember, we were already halfway off the road). From my seat in the rear of the car, I couldn't see much, but both Mayela and Aimee let out two little shrieks as they saw what I didn't. The rear axle had been getting closer and closer, and the back of the truck was clearly going to hit us. Before we could react (this all happened very quickly; the truck was flying), we heard a chilling *thunk* followed by a pretty painful metal-on-metal scraping.
There goes the coffee.
After we realized what had happened, Mayela started grumbling something in Spanish. I couldn't translate the words, but I still had a pretty good understanding of what she was saying.
Aimee got out of the car, assuming that the driver would stop, but of course, he didn't. When Mayela saw the lack of brake lights, she spun the car around. Aimee told us to forget about her and just go!
This put me in a bit of a quandary. Aimee was about to become a lone tourist in a probably safe, but busy market. So I was caught between my boyfriendly duty to stay with her, and my big-guy duty to go act as some muscle in the confrontation that Mayela was itching for.
But with Aimee quickly in the rear view mirror, and Mayela chasing the truck down the Pan-Am, I didn't have much time to make that decision.
So I put on my seat belt, I looked around, and I tried to figure out what the hell just happened.
Mayela quickly caught up with the truck (a bit too quickly for my taste, but I understood her lead-footedness). She pulled behind it, honked her horn, and flashed her lights, The driver paid no attention. So Mayela pulled alongside the truck (in the opposite lane) and repeated the maneuver. And I pooped myself a little. Then she pulled in front of the truck, and forced a slowdown.
Mayela was looking ahead during all of this, so she didn't notice that the truck had pulled off the road while she was ahead of it. I needed to tell her, but I had just realized a pretty important lesson. Adrenaline is an extremely potent Spanish blocker.
I managed to grunt out a few syllables to get her attention. Even though I couldn't come close to enunciating what had happened, I did manage to point to where the truck had pulled in to.
"Good job, Lassie, now take us to where little Timmy fell down."
So Mayela performed her second mach-7 u-turn across both lanes of the Pan-Am, and I performed my second pants-pooping.
We pulled into the business that the truck had parked in. Again, my translation juices we're a little blocked up, but I could tell that the driver was feigning surprise at the whole ordeal. "Oh, I hit you at 40 miles an hour?" "Oh, you've been following me for the last 3 miles?" When he realized that this tactic was getting him nowhere, he shifted gears. "Oh, that's just a little scratch." (Her door had been ripped into, and would no longer open. "Just a little scratch," indeed.)
I could tell that Mayela was trying to get him to go to the police station, but he wanted no part of that. So in my best eye-glare Spanish (still no luck with the words), I said, "yeah, punk!"
But before I had any chance to gauge the situation (or notice the gun that we later found out he was carrying), he got in the car. So I assumed that my intimidating mute-moron impersonation had worked, and we were going to the police station. Or he was just cutting his losses and stealing the car.
Turns out it was the former.
So I got in the back seat for one of the more awkward car rides that I've been on. When Mayela pulled into the police "station" (a few rooms in a converted home), I happened to look inside the one police car in front of the building. It was pulling out, and guess who was in the back? None other than our abandoned produce shopper, Aimee!
She told us that after a brief "so...now what?" moment, one of the produce vendors encouraged her to go to the police station. She got a ride there during our little adventure with the truck driver, and was in the middle of leading the police back to the crash site.
Aimee claims that she had suffered the same linguistic paralysis that I did, but I'm skeptical. Had I been in that position, I wouldn't have been able to muster an "hola", let alone describe a crime scene. Impressive.
Mayela, surprisingly composed, described to the police what had happened. The truck driver tossed in his two cents, and we went back to the crash site. Mayela parked her car where it was during the collision, and the police shut down the freeway to take measurements. This created a bit of a spectacle.
After the police were satisfied with their information, we all went back to the station, and Mayela probably filled out some forms and gave some statements. I have absolutely no idea, though, since I was stuck on car-watch duty while the girls went in and spoke with the police. I really couldn't contribute much more than being a warm body that could stand next to an automobile. I must have been sick on the day that we went over car crashes in Spanish class. I had nothing.
A few hours later, things seemed to be settling down. However, the police would not give Mayela a copy of the statement. She really wanted one, though, since there was a larger-than-you'd-think chance that the truck driver would just come back to the police station that night, and pay off the cops to "forget" to file their report.
But she eventually relented, and we went back home. I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but Mayela had recently won her town's election for the position of vice-mayor, so she had a little bit of clout at the police station. There may actually be a chance that this all plays out fairly. In addition, the truck driver happened to have insurance, which is apparently a rare phenomenon here.
We probably won't know how things work out for a few weeks, but I'm sure it'll be interesting!
