Living Haiti

Rental Car Fun...

These days in Haiti, (and by these days, I mean "after the earthquake") it seems that renting cars is totally at a premium and if you don't have lots of extra money it's going to be FRUSTRATING. I have been dealing with this since I got here in September. Any time you need to rent a car, you better be willing to shell out some dough.

I have a team here. Our usual bus driver was booked for this week so it was up to us to book another means of travel.

I always try to keep things as cheap as possible for our teams. I know that it is expensive to come on mission trips, and most times the people coming here are scraping by the cash to make a trip like this happen.

So this makes finding other transportation sometimes difficult.

I finally found a van that they said would fit 12 people and was able to rent it for the price of $160.00 a day. I figured for some days I could get by with the guesthouse car and a friend's pick up....and even though it was ideal, that's how we started. It worked out fine, although I had people sitting in the bed of a pickup truck.

Yesterday I picked up the van. When I finally loaded everyone in it, A.) They couldn't all fit. B) it was horribly uncomfortable for some, and C.) The car dragged along the bottom of the group because it clearly could not handle the weight of 12 people.

We made the decision to take the van back. Even though it was a slightly cheaper price than you would pay for a van right now in Haiti, this clearly wasn't going to serve our needs. Luckily my fiance was able to go with me and help sort through the particulars. I was able to return the van. I consider that somewhat amazing that they were willing to give me money back.

A friend said they knew a guy who would let us use his van. He called him and the van driver said he'd do it for 100 dollars a day. This seemed like a GREAT deal. We said yes. Then he called back and said that they guy at least wanted 10 dollars per person. Ok...we were going to take 13 people now so we said 130 dollars. Deal. Then the guys calls back AGAIN...now he wants at least 280 dollars for the day. So we decided to let that go too.

So here we are...Sunday morning...back to where we were with a pickup truck and the guesthouse car.

It makes me wish I could just go to Budget and get what I need. Ah well. Such is life...and at least we all have transportation.