The kindness of strangers

Driving in Puerto Rico is interesting.  Rules of traffic don't really seem to apply, and you may get flicked off even when the other driver is the one in the wrong.  Roads aren't well marked, or sometimes not marked at all.  The iPhone Maps app sometimes tells you to turn onto a nonexistent street.

This last one happened to us as we tried to make our way out to Fort Buchanan to check out the Exchange and the base.  Also, Mike really wanted to check out the 9 hole course there.  He's eager to play some golf. Anyway, back to the driving.  We had made our way towards Fort Buchanan following the directions on our Maps app very carefully.  The next direction was to turn right onto Calle Buchanan.  I told Mike that I thought we'd missed the turn.  (I'm the navigator in this relationship, Mike's the driver.)  He turned us around and got us into the turn lane to turn onto what we thought was Calle Buchanan.  A street sign here would've been welcome.  I zoomed in on the Map and realized we were turning a street too soon.  We figured we could turn early and make a couple quick turns and be on Buchanan.  Wrong again.  The side streets were all gated off.  Well, damn.  We pulled back out onto the main road and that's when I realized the problem.  Calle Buchanan didn't exist.  Maps had us turning left into a parking lot.  I told Mike to pull over so we could get a handle on things and find another way around.  We tried everything.  I googled the Fort and got an address.  Maps couldn't give us directions between our locations.  I tried again locating us.  No such luck.

We sat there for 5 minutes before Mike flagged down a driver leaving the gated development where we had parked ourselves.  The driver was a young woman, probably in her 20's.  Mike asked if she knew where the Fort was.  She didn't, but got on the phone with a friend who told her.  She told us we could follow her back into the development and make our way to the base that way.  She then proceeded to turn around and lead us through the development and out the back gate which abuts the Fort.

Mike and I happily followed her through the winding streets and out we came right next to the gate at Fort Buchanan.  We were astonished.  There aren't many places in the world where a young girl would go out her way to help couple of strangers find their way.

The roads aren't marked, and when asking for directions you'll usually get sets of landmarks rather than streets to mark your travel by, but if we keep running into strangers like this one, we'll always find our way . . . eventually.