Whew! The Easter holiday rush is over and I’m still here to tell the story, a survivor of some of the hairiest roadway antics I’ve ever witnessed. 

Lakeside is always packed with out-of-town visitors during the two-week Semana Santa-Pascua onslaught. But with the local government ardently pushing its Chapala Está de Moda promotion campaign, the usual flood of tourists took on tsunami proportions this year. 

According to City Hall estimates, more than 200,000 folks poured into the area during the first vacation week alone. The state’s regional tourism chief reported 98 percent hotel occupancy. And our local traffic department chief tracked more than 2,000 private vehicles and 250 passenger buses wheeling in from Guadalajara by noon on Friday, March 25, creating a backup that stretched as far as Chapala Haciendas.  

Perhaps the bumper-to-bumper density helped slow down antsy drivers enough to prevent disaster, other than the odd fender-benders and one significant crash with no one seriously injured. Also, in an unprecedented collaborative move, the mayor and the traffic chief put their heads together to get boots on the ground, with extra cops and a team of hired hands dispatched to guide motorists and pedestrians through blinking stop lights and the most congested points.  

Still, I’m not quite over the adrenaline rush of watching devil-may-care nutcases speed past long lines of cars trapped in the central Ajijic bottleneck, nor the utter astonishment of seeing the occasional car running amok along the Ciclopista bike track. 

As things mellow with the departure of Tapatio throngs and our snowbird population, it’s a good time for year-round residents to take stock of minding our mobility manners.

 Can we start paying more attention to our surroundings? Use that rear view mirror to watch for cars coming up behind or alongside before slamming on the brakes and inching off the road to turn or park.  Respect those washed out yellow lines indicating the five-meter no parking zone at every corner. Pull up the fat SUVs and pickups in a straight line hugging the curb before bailing out on a narrow street. 

Avoid blocking intersections when traffic has stopped up ahead. Slow down and wave through folks on foot and other cars waiting to cross the way.  You’ll probably be rewarded with a grateful smile or salute. 

And such common courtesies likewise apply to householders and business people, native and foreign, who have adopted the despicable practice of blocking curbsides at their doorsteps and store fronts with rocks, buckets, chairs, signs and tables of merchandise.  Since when did public streets become private property? 

It’s simply a matter of following the proverbial Golden Rule so that one and all have a better chance of kicking back and relishing the relative calm of what used to be called the off-season.