Jamaica is an unpredictable place. This includes the transportation, both formal and informal. I mostly take the coasters and route taxis and have come to learn that what you would reasonably expect to be a regular, uneventful ride over a short distance is often never the case.

This morning, I was finishing up a run and caught a taxi up at the University of West Indies. The ride started out normally enough, except when we took a deep detour through August Town (a garrison community down the hill from the University) to drop off a woman and her son. That was fine.

Then, with the gospel tunes blaring, the driver picked up another woman and we made our way to Half Way Tree, on a different route than the route taxis usually take. On the way, we encountered three hefty cows meandering along the main road leading up to the campus. They looked like they had somewhere to be, the three of them. The driver slowed down and started heckling these cows. Now, heckling people out the window of a moving car is normal here. Everyone feels free to comment loudly on what they observe others doing, whether they know the person or not. But I have never seen anyone heckle an animal. The driver actually slowed down and waved at the cows out the window. He started going on and on about how these cows are in the road, how they are in the way, taking up too much room, going too slow and that their owner was irresponsible. His tirade lasted about three minutes. I had to laugh out loud. My two companions in the car, however, did not react, nor did the cows. They just kept on going to to where they had to be.

We then made a stop at the gas station where the driver drove around the pumps a few times before decided which one he liked. He filled up with $200J of gas ($2.00US) and went on a five-minute rant about how the last pump operator tried to rip him off and how the gas was “biffle buffle” (I have never heard that and don’t know what it means). We finally left the gas station, I finally made it home. A ride that should be about five minutes turned into almost half an hour. It is never boring here!