Top to Bottom: Foot bridge, heading across the river, the cable ferry, Cathedral
Usually on Sundays we try to offer our teams an opportunity to get out into the Haitian communities where we live and work. We gave the Barkeyville, Pa. Church of God team an Indiana Jones type adventure when we visited Ti Riviere . Petite-Riviere de-L'Artibonite is a historic town across the river from our Project Help-Haiti Borel compound. The cable ferry is the quickest way to cross The other options are to go down the road about 2 miles then drive back to the Dam that impounds the water for the irrigation canals cross over the river and follow a bumpy road 2 miles back to get to the town. The other crossing is about 9 miles back to the bridge at Pont Sonde the 10 miles back on the opposite side.
The cable ferry is the route of us locals, once you cross you can walk the less than a mile road into town or take a motor bike or tap-tap if your not into hiking. The second advantage is this little jaunt offers some Indiana Jones type adventure. That starts when you park your vehicle and cross the rickety foot and motor bike bridge across the irrigation canal. you have to walk about a quarter of a mile to the river through some fields. The cable ferry is quite ingenious in that it is propelled each direction by the river current. The ferry is just 2 steel boats with a wood platform fastened on top . Two small cables with pulleys attach the boat to a large cable that spans the river and is anchored onto concrete posts. To catch the current and cross just requires changing the length of the lead cable to pitch the degree of the boats angle to the current.
The town itself is very attractive with a central city square , a cathedral, a palace, a fort and great views of the river running through the valley below. Though we never got wet much of the trip threatened an afternoon rain which kept the heat down. Part of the reason we went over was to look for some artwork as there are several artists living in town who paint some unique pieces of art.
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