Having a Fit

Yes, it is true. I had a Fit yesterday afternoon. A Honda Fit, that is! Almost to the day of my one year anniversary of arriving in Brazil, I finally test drove a car. After the Chevy experience, in which there was no car to test drive, I figured that I should lay the trail and pre-arrange the Honda experience. The Fit is a pretty nice car, a hatchback but not one of the micro-mini hatches that are all over Brazil.

The test drive was shockingly short -- I essentially got to go down the street for a kilometre, turn around and come back. And that was billed as the long version! Unfortunately it is pretty hard to figure out what you think about a car when you spend your whole time freaking out that some crazy Recife driver is going to cut you off / rear-end you / brake too quickly immediately in front of you / etc. / not to mention the motorcycles weaving in and out of traffic, rather than paying attention to the specifics of the car.

Now maybe my glasses are a little bit too rosey ... but I am pretty sure that I was less nervous learning to drive a manual-shift car in São Paulo than I was driving an automatic in Recife. While I admit that the first few days of learning to drive manual in São Paulo were intensely nerve-racking, by the end I was feeling pretty good. And some how, it seems that in São Paulo, although traffic is a chaotic nightmare, a certain level of respect exists between drivers. You need to be assertive and have an excellent sense of space, or lack thereof, no question about that. But other drivers' will almost certainly give you the inch and a half or two inches that you need to change lanes or turn or do whatever else you must. Not so much so in Recife! Ladies and Gentlemen, watch your mirrors. In any case, the test drive was a success. No one was injured, at least not physically. And hopefully I will make my mind up soon!