wow. as we were leaving the dam, it began to rain. hard. we proceeded slowly. then a car stopped in front of us. after a couple minutes (i thought they were waiting for someone), i passed the car. about 10 seconds later, there was a shallow pool of water under my feet (yes, in the car). i pulled to the side of the road. i heard a loud scraping sound as the car tried overcome a large curb (which was invisible to us because of the water level). i stopped for a bit. backed up. realized it was stupid to sit in a pool of water and drove onto the sidewalk — with the engine sputtering, wheels skidding and the bottom of the car scraping against the concrete.

across the street, one car was almost completely flooded (water from the window down). most cars made it. some gave up. some died. we waited. 30 minutes later, the water level was down again. we saw that we accidentally drove over the drain on the road (and thus, the lowest part of the road). the car made it to the hostel without any issues. although, it’s now noisier than usual and i think something may be broken underneath. according to some locals, they’ve never seen the road get flooded like that. it’s by far the worst stretch of road i’ve driven on yet. maybe the sentra isn’t ready to sail to antarctica after all.