Vehicles I Have Met!

You know that TV show called "Most Dangerous Road" (or something like that) on Current TV? Well..... been there, done that. The Atlas mountain roads are curvy, full of switchbacks, and narrow roads with nothing to keep you from careening over the sides and into the valleys except your good sense and the good will of the oncoming traffic. Plus, in many places, the oncoming vehicles or even the vehicles you had to pass were not what we normally see in the good old US.

Not so unusual, but the tractors often were overloaded with people and had a variety of cloth covers for shade.

There were a million versions of this litle truck. Some had real roofs, some had shade like covers and some went topless like this one. They were driven in the city as well as most villages. Again - at times, several people could be riding on these.

These were only in the cities and functioned as sight seeing taxis I believe. All were elaborate in their decorations.

                      Yes, that is a truck in front of Michael LOADED with big bags stuffed with ??

                                                   Passing was pretty easy on this road.....

other times, a little hairy. And actually I couldn't take pictures of the really scary ones where someone had to backup for a little ways to a wider spot in the road or where one vehicle had to really, really hug the side of the mountain to allow room for the others. I couldn't take pictures because I was busy watching the edges of the car, moving the mirror in or just holding my breath.

And no report would be complete without mentioning the double decker transports that hauled cattle or sheep in these two story arrangements! I kid you not. Cows and sheep apparently willingly stand in the top level of these trucks and ride over narrow, winding, high mountain roads without a problem? Sometimes there were also people up in those top levels too. I could not tell if the animals were tied down somehow?? There were horse hauling trucks as well, but not on double decker trucks. Now that I think of it, I don't remember seeing goats in these kind of trucks. So... either goats and horses are too valuable to risk having them jump out or there are too difficult/smart to get up there. Who knows? Often both levels were indeed packed tightly with animals.

This is only a quick show of these trucks we saw. I might add though that most trucks sport very colorful paint jobs with lots of wooden designs attached and lots of flags, banners beads, etc hanging inside the cab as well.