food budget and won’t be the same
anyway.
Fortunately, by the next morning,
we had got over our loss and we were
ready to crack on with our mission
once again. Our mission, to use the
trip to raise awareness and funds for
organisations fighting modern slav-
ery. We aimed to do so by visiting
charities who fight the issue on route
and raising money for them through
the absurd challenge of riding our
completely inappropriate vehicle
around the entire planet. It’s why
we had come to Mexico City; to meet
with an organisation called El Pozo
de Vida, e a charity who are set up
in Mexico City with the sole goal of
eradicating modern slavery and hu-
man trafficking from Mexico.
It turns out El Pozo de Vida have a
huge challenge on their hands.
First and foremost, it’s huge be-
cause they focus on Mexico City
and that’s just a huge place. Twenty
million people live in the city, making
it the biggest city in the Americas and
the biggest Spanish speaking city on
the planet. It’s a really brilliant place
to explore. If you’re a foodie, you’ll
instantly fall in love with it - every
corner is littered with street vendors
all trying to whack out the best tacos
and tortas in town. The city is burst-
ing with culture and you could get
lost for days as you dive in and out of
the tiny streets, huge boulevards and
quirky undercover markets. It truly
is a brilliant place to visit but behind
its flamboyant frontier is an issue that
plagues every major town and city on
the planet – Modern Slavery.
We met Nicole, an El Pozo de Vida
employee, to talk about the issue.
She told us that El Pozo de Vida esti-
mate there to be 18,000 people living
in slavery in Mexico City and that
the Global Slavery Index estimates
there to be 300,000 across the entire
country. In Mexico City that means
that roughly 1 in every 1100 people
are living in slavery. Worldwide, it’s
believed that 70% of modern slavery
victims are women and girls and it’s
the women and girls of Mexico City
who Nicole and the team try to help
the most.
Nicole told us that in doing so they
are often putting themselves on the
line. Organised crime is what keeps
the trafficking going and it turns out
that the Cartel don’t like it too much
when you try to take away their
profits. El Pozo de Vida’s team have
actually received death threats and
even had a hand delivered one turn
up at their safe house for survivors.
They carry on working under these
TRAVERSE 72
pressures despite receiving little
support from the government or law
enforcement. We sat with Nicole and
discussed the issue for a few hours
before pledging to offer our support
in fundraising for the charity through
our ridiculous trip.
We left Mexico City the next day
and got on with the challenge at
hand. On this occasion, that meant
taking a 36-hour bus to the port town
of Progresso. This was complete lux-
ury compared to travelling by scooter
and sidecar – there was no aching
back and no fearing for our lives. We
were on the big vehicle’s team for
a change, we need not worry about
being bullied off the road!
Our boat was taking an unsched-
uled stop in Progresso and we had
managed to get our container taken
off ahead of its actual destination
which was a few hundred miles fur-
ther up the coast – probably another
couple of weeks at sea by the time it
had cleared the ports.
Another week later and we had sur-
vived the port process. It seemed like
we were the first people to ever get a
vehicle out of the port of Progresso,
let alone a scooter and sidecar.
We speak very little Spanish so it
would have been nigh on impossible
to get the bike out had we not shipped