Fixing a Road in the Campo

Here in El Salvador....just getting around can be an adventure. On the way out to the gold mine, Don Juan showed us a road project he was responsible for overseeing as a member of the Santa Rosa de Lima Town Council. The road had already been there, but they were working to make it wider and flatter. Here is a how you make a road.

1. Find a large hill of dirt/rock. Bring a big machine up that hill and start carving away at it.

2. Fill dump trucks with that dirt, and have them drive it down to the road. They'll dump the material, called balastre, on top of the crummy old road to make it better.

3. Have another machine (I don't know there names, everything here is called "la maquina") spread that dirt over the road so that it is a bit more flat.

4. Have a water truck go over that layer of dirt, spraying water so that it gets a little bit wet.

5. Have a heavy duty roller machine go over the wet dirt and pack it down so that it doesn't erode (it will anyway once it starts raining).


In the end, you have a very nice looking road. When Erica and I were bouncing around in the back of the pick up truck, and I said, "this is a reallllly nice road," she just laughed at me and told me I'd been here too long.