Our poor truck

We've grown to love our Toyota Tundra pickup. It's a 2000, but was in lovely shape. It was our comfortable home for 5000 miles and a month on our way from Oregon to Belize and has been a true helpmate with many of our projects. I'm setting this up to sound much worse than it is, but as you might guess, she's not as pretty any more.

In San Ignacio, the streets are quite narrow so most are one-way. To make parking fairer to the merchants, they have a unique solution. The first thru the 15th you park on the right side of the street. The 16th thru the end of the month, you park on the left. OK, on with the story. The end of November I was driving on Burns Avenue (the main street) and a taxi was parked on the left or wrong side of the street. His passenger opened her door just as I was driving by and wham, her door mashed in the front fender and continue to dent and scratch the full length of the truck. We ended up spending most of the day in the police station and insurance company office. What a pain. Things move very slowly here. Luckily, the driver admitted that the taxi was at fault, and we were not responsible. That seemed pretty straight forward, but turns out that everyone groaned when we told them which insurance company was liable because they're the worst. We found a "body shop" and had to pay for a repair quote. I put it in quotes because you'd never believe that they could repair anything. Most have junk sitting around and do their work right out in the open. Anyway, we got the quote and took it to the insurance co. Because of the amount, we were told that someone would have to come from Belize City in three weeks to do his own appraisal. That would make it Christmas! Frustrating. After Christmas Art checked with their office and was told that the person had decided it wasn't necessary to make the trip and that they were just sending a check. Voille! Art took this on as his task and relentlessly visited their office, looking for the check. Supposedly, the check was sent a couple of times, but got lost. Finally, after 2 weeks, we got a call that it was here. Patience is the only way to survive in Belize. Our tough little truck had joined the ranks of "Belize trucks", but we prefer her to stay as nice as possible, for as long as possible. Anyway, she's now in the hands of "Bado", who has what he calls a body shop ??? and he swears he can make her "better than new". Crossing our fingers. Thank goodness for our trusty old Trooper, who just keeps rattling along, to help us navigate our hill while the truck is gone.