the fuel filter.
The bike was stuttering again, as it
had done before and we knew it was
down to a clogged fuel pump filter.
I should probably say at this point
that we had absolutely no experience
of riding motorcycles, scooters or
sidecars before we decided to do this
project and we had no idea about
how they worked either.
To give you an idea of just how lit-
tle we knew – we learnt what a wheel
bearing was for the first time when
it fell out of our sidecar wheel in the
middle of the Sahara! We had spent
a few days working out that our fuel
filter was causing this problem back
in the Atacama Desert so on this rare
occasion we knew what had to be
done.
We got a small length of pipe and
began trying to siphon the fuel out
of the tank, ready to get the filter
out. After about 30 minutes we had
only managed to get around half out
and I think a quarter of it was in our
stomachs. We were more drinking
our fuel through a giant straw than
successfully siphoning it out. Fortu-
nately, two local guys name Gilberto
and Francesco saw us struggling and
couldn’t bare to watch the gringos
drink anymore fuel. They took it
off us, siphoned it out first time, we
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cleaned up the filter and we were
back on the road half an hour later.
We racked up another 100km’s or
so and began climbing up through
the mountains on the way to Puebla.
By this time, it was about 2pm and
despite our earlier problems we were
making good progress. However,
while we were crawling up hill at a
snail’s pace, another biker pulled
alongside us and waved for us to pull
over. He had spotted that our front
tyre was completely flat. The guy
on the bike, Josue, stopped with us
and offered to help get us a recovery
truck.
“No thanks” we said, “we’ve got a