Journey to Cap Haitien

Once we were finished in Pignon we traveled by truck to Cap Haitien. "Cap" is the second largest city in Haiti and is located on the northern coast of the country. Its about 50 nautical miles to Cuba.

Lucy had to travel with the luggage in a truck ahead of us. The roads were beyond desciption. To give you an example. The distance to Cap is only about 25 miles but it takes 4.5 hours to travel there by road! Initially we had hoped to take a plane ride down but the only plane available was the 182. By this time we had all had enough of the 182 and we were looking forward to seeing the country side. I must say that during this trip I was able to see a good majority of the country and the extremes of city life to country life. This trip to Cap over unbelivable roads was awesome. To describe or even show you pictures of the roads wouldnt do justice to some of the ruts, holes, and incongruities. Luckily we had a relatively new Land Crusiser and it did a remarkable job navigating the terrain. If there are any Land Rover dealers out there who would like to film an offroad comercial....the road to Cap is your place! haha I actually mentioned that this would be a great place to have an off road rally. Much like the race across Baja.

Our land rover and a picture of some of the typical roads.

This is a view of the Citadel. It was build after the revolution around 1808. It sits atop a mountain overlooking Cap.

There were people all along the road carrying produce to market.

This guy was ina hurry to get somewhere.

This is an example of the "tap-tap's" Its how most people get around the country. As you can see the bus in the background there are people all over the top of the bus as well. Its amazing that more people aren't hurt in auto accidents becasue of the road conditions and overcrowded transportation. We saw many people in our Pignon clinic who road the TapTap's from 6 HOURS to come and see us. It puts into perspective how determined and desparate the people were for health care.



This is a video of the second river crossing on the way to Cap. This was the dry season so crossing the river wasnt as dangerous.

this gives you an idea of how narrow and crowded the streets were in Cap. Motorcycles zooming in and out of the traffic jams. Lots of near misses and random cars pull out into traffic. Imagine your local city with no street lights, no lines on the road but surprisingly it works!

This is a view from one of the bridge crossings in Cap. Note the shanty towns along the river.

This is a view of Cap from the mountains.