puncture repair kit – 10 minutes and
we’ll be back on the road".
It turned out we couldn’t plug the
gap and three hours later we were
still sat on the side of the highway.
Amazingly, Josue was still there with
us as he wanted to make sure we
were okay before he left.
One good thing about the hugely
expensive toll roads in Mexico is that
they usually include free recovery.
At a cost of around £7 every couple
of hundred kilometres, they should
include something! Josue got in touch
with the recovery people around 10
minutes after we couldn’t fix it and
they were dispatched to come and
find us. Three hours later and they
still hadn’t arrived. The local police
force had though. They dropped in
to make sure everything was okay.
Josue was really nervous when they
first arrived but then breathed a huge
sigh of relief and wrote in his transla-
tor app, “these are good police” and
“they are scared of your embassy”.
We were quite pleased about that and
we all decided to carry on waiting
together.
Another hour later and the recov-
ery truck turned up. Josue asked
them to take us to the nearest town
where we could find a garage and a
hotel. They declined and said they
TRAVERSE 77
could only take us to the next exit of
the toll road where we would be left
to sort ourselves out. By this time, it
was pitch black and there was no way
we were leaving the relative safety
of the police guys and Josue to sit on
the side of the road somewhere else.
Instead we asked the police officers if
we could just lift the bike on to their
pick up and then they could take us
to the next town. To our amazement
they said yes.
We had actually had to do this be-
fore in Ethiopia so had a bit of experi-
ence in the matter. We got the rig on
the back of the pick up and strapped
it down ready to go. Then we climbed