As you read previously, my motorcycle broke down in Patagonia after wrestling for two days with mighty winds, and I had to send it to the next town so I could start the diagnosis. Well the diagnosis is in. I took the engine apart and my suspicions were right on the money. I had three pistons with holes on top. To make it worse, debris from the detonations splattered all over the inside of the engine, and destroyed the rod bearings. Mar del Plata, Argentina was the end of this motor.

Although all the parts could be found either in US or Europe, there were virtually no parts available in Argentina for this bike. As I always do, I turned to my abundant faithful Suzuki followers on the GSR and in no time, Matt Hanscom, one of the GSR members generously donated a complete motor out of his own bike, and the rest of the guys gathered up the bits and pieces for the swap. Z1 Enterprise kicked in with all new gaskets and necessary parts to make the replacement engine as reliable as new, and as we speak, there are a few guys working on the engine to get it into shape. The big problem is shipping the motor down south, and although many has pledged donations or already contributed towards the shipping cost, it’s still not clear which route we should take to get it down here economically and quickly.

I’m eager to thank everyone who has helped with this dilemma, either financially or by moral support, but I don’t have the complete list of names here so I won’t mention any until I do. Thank you for all you’re doing and thank you for the encouraging comments and emails, they do make me feel that I’m not alone. In the mean time while I’m waiting for the engine to get here, here’s the aftermath story:

Tati and Facundo took me to the bus station and made sure that the driver knew where to drop me off. I was supposed to get off the bus 40km before Mar del Plata at the Otamendi Junction, and the guys would pick me up to take me to Tati’s farm in Otamendi. He even wrote on a piece of paper for me: I need to get off in Otamendi, in Spanish just in case the driver forgot.

The bus ride was only 400km long and I figured it would take no more than 6 hours, but I guess the Argentine buses are like Greyhounds; it stopped a million times to pick up passengers along the way. I was dead tired and I slept pretty much the whole time. Tati was supposed to call me at 6pm to see where I was to pick me up so I kept the phone on for his call. Around 6 pm the phone rang, and it was Cynthia who hadn’t heard from me in a few days and had no idea yet about the motorcycle motor. I told her that the bike motor blew up, and that I was on a bus and asked her not to call me as I was waiting for a phone call (the phone battery was almost dead) and hung up. She took it as I was blowing her off, and called again. It took 6 more phone calls and precious battery life to literally beg her not to call, and by that time the phone died for good.

At dusk, after 8 hours I got dropped off at Otamendi road, a long country road with nothing in sight with no phone or even knowing where I should go. The clouds started coming in and a light drizzle started as I waited over hour and half at the side of the road for a phone call that I couldn’t answer. I tried turning the phone back on and it started ringing immediately. It was Tati and all I said was that “I’m here,” and it cut off again. As I was preparing myself for a bivouac for the night, I saw a dim motorcycle light approaching me, and that was the Calvary.

Facundo took me to the farm where we had a reunion. Four other guys with their bikes were there and along with a German woman who the guys had seen riding her Suzuki DR400 heading for Buenos Aires and invited her too. The giant grill at Tati’s farm was in full operation with chickens and chorizos roasting away, and the endless flow of wine took my mind off the pickle of a situation I was in, at least for the night. We would go to Mar del Plata after the holiday to see about the bike.

The next day Tati took me to his mom’s house where I could stay. Fortunately they had the much needed internet and I started the search for the parts. Not knowing what was wrong with the bike yet, all I could do was to wait. Finally the holiday was over and we picked up the bike and rented a truck to take it back to the farm. Loading and unloading this beast on back of a pickup truck is not easy as we had no ramps and with the bike not running, even if we had ramps it would be a nightmare. When we got to Otamendi, there were only three of us so we opted for a solution. Tati ran into town and picked up couple of drunk guys from a local bar to help out for $2 each. With five us, we picked up the bike and lowered it to the ground.

I immediately started to dismantle the engine and the further I inspected the worse it looked. Three pistons out of four had dime size holes on top and with further inspection, it turned out that the rod bearings were shot from the debris of the blown up pistons. The engine was beyond repair. It was repairable if I had the parts, a clean place to work, tools and access to a machine shop, but I had none of that. I reported my findings and dismay on the GSR (the Suzuki forum) and went to bed.

When I woke up in the morning, the guys at GSR were already on top of it and were making things happen. Matt Hanscom, a member and a friend, donated a complete engine out of his own bike, Z1 Enterprise, our parts sponsor pitched in with all new parts to make the new engine road worthy, another member donated a complete final drive, and Jared Williams, our public relation director (also a GSR member) lead the whole orchestra.

Despite Christmas closing in and family responsibilities, Jared went out of his way and picked up the engine in Maine, then disassembled the whole thing in his kitchen to fix it up. More GSR guys pitched in and they had a wrenching party at Jared’s house to finish the work. In the meanwhile, many members donated money for the shipping cost, and all I had to do was to stay put. And put I stayed. I stayed at the farm. Alone.

I read the two books I had with me twice, watched every movie I had on my computer, wrote blogs, edited videos and even tried to compose music on my computer, but there was nothing that could cure my boredom. I spent the Christmas alone and the New Year. My only transportation was a lousy ancient bicycle that went flat every day, and heading to the town of Otamendi became my only getaway. I would go to an internet cafe to catch up on the shipping process despite the ungodly slow connection, and busied myself shopping for food. Cynthia served as my only contact many days with the outside world, as even my parents couldn’t get a hold of me.

My only pastime became killing flies at the farm as with a pig farm next door, there was never a shortage of flies in my room. Sometimes there were a few hundred files hanging upside down from the ceiling, and one movement from me sent them buzzing all over the place. The first few days I bought bug sprays to kill them, but it got expensive quickly. Then I learned to spray a few shots, and close the door for a few minutes. It wouldn’t kill them but made them a much easier target for my rolled up newspaper.

With flies came spiders too. All my life I liked spiders or at least I left them alone until this farm. One night as I was watching a movie, I felt something walking up on my foot, and as I looked down, I threw the computer to the side, and jumped up a few feet in the air. I could hear my heartbeat in my head, and I was frozen. The giant tarantula-looking hairy spider was more afraid of me as I was afraid of him, but that didn’t matter. As I hit him on the head with a flip flop and thought that it was over, an even bigger one came out from under the bed, and headed right at me. This time I ran out of the room and headed straight for the town. I came back armed with bug sprays and sprayed the whole room until I was about to pass out myself. I never found the body of the second one, but I’m officially staying out of like with spiders.

Days went by and the shipping situation became a problem. Courier services like UPS and FedEx were way out of our price range, and our only hope was airfreight. After a long search (not me, I only take credit for staying put) the rescue team finally figured out a way to send the motor down here. Jared meticulously packed up all the stuff and built a crate for it and was on his way out to send it off when the worst winter storm of the decade hit the northeastern United States. With snow piled up everywhere, over 7000 flights were canceled, and I had to stay put even longer. A few days later, finally the engine went out of Boston, MA and it’s en route to Buenos Aires as we speak.

I’m deeply indebted to all of you who gave moral backing, hands on assistance and financial support to rescue my ass from Argentina. I don’t even know how to repay you, but I want you to know that I’m blessed and grateful to have friends and supporters like you. Thank you, thank you and a million times more: thank you.

First I would like to thank James South, Lynn Minthorne, Gregory Quinn, Rich Jordan and Ahti Peura for their support and generous donations. You guys are part of this expedition as much as I am, and to this day I’ve been amazed by your support and generosity and humbled by your selflessness. Big corporations have not shown us much love, as apparently feeding little kids is not their business idea, so we’ve relied on public support to carry on our mission.

I’ve personally invested everything I had in this non-profit organization, and if I find a penny on side of the road I still put it towards the cause. But one man’s wallet is not big enough to take on a project like this effectively (Bill Gates is a rare breed). Thanksgiving is in a few days and while the times are still tough for many back in United States, you’d be amazed what your spare change could buy for the kids down here. I’m not asking for anything for myself, I’m just asking you to consider making another family in need happy with a spare dollar bill that won’t buy you anything in US. Enough begging now, let’s get to the story.

Tuesday morning found us aboard a short and uneventful flight on the COPA Airlines, from Panama City to Cartagena, Colombia. You can either take a boat or fly from Central America to South America. The boat ride is around $250 depends on the captain, and the airfare is somewhere around the neighborhood of $300. Since we were told that the container will get to Cartagena in 3 days, we took the short 40 minutes flight rather than going on a 5 day long ocean journey (big mistake). From the second we came out of the airport, I was relieved to see countless motorcycles, all in the 125cc range whizzing around, because at least I could find bike parts in this town. We settled just across the peninsula from El Centro in the Manga district in an apartment that Claudio rented and were glued to the balcony every night watching the spectacular sunsets across the water.

It soon hit us that our stay in Cartagena wasn’t going to be as short as we thought, as the container never made it on the ship in Panama as scheduled. Cynthia and I had taken just our laptops and one change of clothing each as we had anticipated arriving in Cartagena and getting our things from the boat in a few days. As Claudio likes to say, we were living in hope, and that lasted for 17 days. We were stuck in Cartagena.

Even though we had more time in beautiful Cartagena, we didn’t go around as much as one would think. This is in large part because we aren’t on vacation, but are on a volunteer mission which involves endless hours of work between the two of us, and also, because we simply don’t have the money. We did enjoy walking around the Centro (the historical walled old city) at night a few times, and had a chance to explore the Spanish Castle, the largest standing Spanish fort in South America after asking for a reduced rate to get in. Best of all, I got to do my favorite activity in the world, going all over the city hunting for bike parts.

Since I broke the turn signal switch in Nicaragua, I set out to find another and I lucked out. I bought a new signal-light-horn combo switch from another bike for $12 USD. It has an on/off for the headlight, and it’s built like a tank. The downside was that it had 16 wires coming out of it with no instruction, and it took 2 hours with a multimeter to figure out what was what. I also bought two new marker lights $1.50 each, two spare relays, spare clutch cable (just the cable), two new tubes for the tires and a new H4 lamp for the headlight as the Chinese lamp I bought in Panama was absolute crap. I could do nothing with all this stuff since the bike was still missing somewhere on the Pacific Ocean. So we waited and waited and waited some more.

We arrived at the Guatemalan border to find out that we should have gone to the customs 40 minutes back in Talachupa to process the cancellation of the Mexican registration/import permit.  Apparently, if you don’t cancel this permit before leaving the country and don’t came back into the country before it expires, you will be charged $500.00, plus a fine if  you try to enter into the Mexico again with a vehicle. We tried to see if we could sort this out by email or phone but were told that no, each car had to go back to La Garita or else potentially be charged $500.00. The RGE guys contacted the British embassy to see how negative the ramifications would be if we didn’t go back. They said it would mostly likely be ok and that they would call the custom for us from the British embassy.

We barely went a few meters out of the border queue and ended up mobbed by a crowd and unable to move. The police were quick to respond, and they guarded us guns in hand and offered to escort us all the way to our destination at Guatemala City. We had a long delay at that juncture as we worked on sorting out the temporary importation status of the vehicles. Apparently, we had gone to a different place to cross the border than where we had originally planned to cross which is partly why things didn’t go as smoothly.

With a throng of people around us, we waited around and made conversations with the locals. All the tropical rain had washed off my shoe polish so I got the best shoeshine of my life from a little boy who worked on my shoes as if I was the president. For one dollar, my combat boots were as shiny as any General’s. A lady gave Cynthia a Rombego (a local fruit) to try for free as we didn’t have any cash, and later a girl approached us and gave us a whole bag of the spiny red fruits. On the inside they look like a large peeled grape and turned out to be succulent and delicious. We shared some with the kids and the police, and the girl invited us to her mother’s store and they gave us a picture to remember our time there and gave Cynthia a keychain. Once again, we have been impressed by the kindness of people to complete strangers.

Finally around 6 p.m, the border ordeal was over, and we started out on the road to Guatemala City. The road was lined by palm trees, banana plants, and many other lush plants. We passed grazing cows, chickens, muddy rivers, and many people walking along the road or riding in bike-cart taxis. After a gas station stop to fuel up for the bike, it was a bit surreal to see how the police with their guns stopped traffic for us to merge back onto our route for no apparent reason other than they could! By now it was dark. Almost immediately we started to encounter potholes of a size and frequency that made me feel like I was trapped in a video game. Trying to avoid them and radio back to the SRZero was quite a feat and took all my concentration. It was pouring as well, naturally. The hours of riding in the rain didn’t help. When we arrived to Guatemala City around 4 a.m., I was more sick, hypothermic, tired and ready for the bed.

Our stay in Guatemala didn’t turn out to be what I envisioned. I wanted to stay at least a month in Guatemala since this country is in the grip of a protracted food insecurity crisis, and the current situation of food insecurity is worsening what is already one of the highest rates of chronic malnutrition in the world (affecting 43% of children below five years of age). We highlighted a malnutrition clinic in Guatemala a few post back. While it was our wish to visit this clinic personally, we were disappointed that my illness prevented us from being able to visit there or other clinics. Needless to say, this is a country with tremendous needs.

I also had a few contacts and a motorcycle club I wanted to visit while there which we had to skip as well. We stayed in Guatemala for 2 days and I honestly don’t remember a minute of it. I was down with high fever and the next thing I remember is getting back on the bike heading fast for El Salvador.

Somehow I woke up without an alarm at 8:40 a.m. I jumped in the shower, got dressed, and went downstairs to see if the departure time was still 9 a.m. Knowing that Chris had just gone to sleep at 7:00 am or so and that some of the team was sleeping as well, just Alex, Andy, and I rode in the van to La Ventosa.  Claudio had spent the night at La Ventosa in hopes of getting more sleep by eliminating the commuting time.

I wasn’t exactly sure what made me wake up early and go along but I was interested in the possibility of a tour of the wind farm. Amazingly we got better than that! The staff arranged for us to climb a wind turbine. They asked if we wanted to climb the shorter one or the taller one. We all said the taller one which is 44 meters high. They gave us white jumpsuits to put on over our clothing to protect us from the grease. We went down a dirt road in a truck to the designated turbine. Alex and I got suited up and put on the protective harnesses and got hooked onto the cable running up the turbine. I naively thought that we were going to walk up actual stairs. I gulped when I looked up and realized instead I would be climbing a ladder reaching up to the sky. “Ok, that’s tall,” I thought. “But no sweat, I can do this,” I gave myself a pep talk. The no sweat part wasn’t literal as already with my two feet planted firmly on the ground, I was sweating quite a bit thanks to the full-body jumpsuit and wishing that I had drank more water. I started up the ladder after the engineer who was leading us, and Alex, who was scampering up like a monkey up a tree. I was toting the camera, and by a third of the way up, was thoroughly spent. I should mention that I can’t do a pull-up to save my life as I have always had a pitiful lack of upper-body strength.  I handed off the camera to Alex to carry at the halfway point and dragged myself up the rest of the way. Once at the top, I was hoping I didn’t stupidly pass out as I was hot and dehydrated.

The day was already gorgeous. I’m talking blue skies painted with fluffy white clouds and lush green all around as it is the rainy season. But from the top of a wind turbine, the 360 degree views were absolutely spectacular. I didn’t want to come down at all. Alex and I snapped some photos and then reluctantly headed down.

We went back to the hotel to get the rest of the guys. By the time we got there it was past 3 p.m., and the guys were waiting in the lobby. Poor Chris was feeling very sick. None of us had eaten yet, so we started to eat at a restaurant by the gas station while Chris started to put in a new clutch cable (Many thanks to Tom Kent for that spare cable! That came in handy sooner than expected!). The second he started fixing the cable, surprise, it started pouring again!

We headed out at near dusk for Tapachula, Chiapas, México, our last stop before crossing the border to Guatemala.  We had 180 miles before us and the rain was not going to let us travel unaccompanied. If we were on our own, we would be much more reticent about driving at night as it is safer to travel by day for a number of reasons. However due to unavoidable factors, at times it becomes a necessity. We drove into the night, sadly missing all the scenery on our last night in Mexico. Chris was sick and the rain pretty much put him over the edge of what he could bear. We arrived in Tapachula at 3 am, and we got to bed around 4:00 a.m. We are crossing the border to Guatemala tomorrow morning if everything goes well.

We departed México City around 6 a.m. trying to beat the city traffic and hoping to arrive early in the afternoon to our destination in Oaxaca, almost 300 miles to the south. Leaving the city, there was an endless sea of concrete homes stretching as far as the eye could see into the hills on either side of the road. As we drove on, the concrete homes gave way into lush green hills blanketed in the cold mist. The sun finally came out and we made our way higher into the mountains on the Pan-American Hwy. The terrain in Mexico is varied. In less than two hours, we traveled through cactus-covered hills to high pine-covered ridges and back into tropical trees.  We were making good time and everyone was in good spirits about covering the 292 miles stretch to Oaxaca with spare time to explore the city.

But it’s been a never missing ritual that every time we get an early start, something goes wrong. We arrived in Oaxaca around 4:00 p.m to find the only road to the town shut down. The local bus companies were on strike and blocked off all the major streets of Oaxaca to protest the low bus fares. No amount of sweet talking and begging would persuade them move the buses, and we had no choice but to wait. Getting around the buses on the motorcycle was manageable, but the electric car and the van couldn’t move an inch. We decided to stay together and wait out the protest. For a long time, people were really civilized but as the rush hour neared, more and more angry voices came out and it got to a point that people were coming out with machetes in their hands and started to throw rocks and kicking the cars.

Things quickly got out of hands and the angry mob started to shake the buses and finally the bus drivers started to move one bus at a time. The tropical rain didn’t fail again, and as we sat somewhat patiently, we got soaked. From 4 o’clock to 7:30, we moved maybe a mile and we were no were near our reserved hotel.

I suggested to the RGE team to forget the Holiday Inn and just settle in a different hotel as all the roads were still closed to the city center, but they decided to push on. Oaxaca is a hilly city and with all the rains, and traffic, it was the last place I wanted to ride at night. At some point with all the rain, something on the bike shorted out and the tail light, brake light and signals went out completely. The constant idling in the traffic heated the motor to a point that shifting gears became almost impossible. I could feel the clutch cable snapping every time I pulled in the clutch, but the RGE team wouldn’t change course. We searched for the elusive Holiday Inn and drove in circles in dark for another 2 hours with no luck.

I had only met the RGE team less than ten days before, but I was so mad and tired that I started shouting at the stupid situation. We had passed many hotels in the past two hours, driving in rain, on 45 degrees hills and sleek cobblestone roads of Oaxaca, but they were determined to stay at the Holiday Inn and no place else. To me, there is a fine line between futility and persistence and we were crossing that line deliberately.

I finally asked for directions and luckily a kid who spoke English led us in his truck to our hotel. I was so pissed that Cynthia stayed a few feet away from me the rest of the night. The last thing I remember is the dinner with Claudio and Cynthia in a little Italian bistro and the rest is out of my conscious memory.

As I write this, it’s worth mentioning that Oaxaca was flooded under water because of the very same torrential rains 10 days after we passed through. Over 40 people died due to the floods and many are without homes now. So when I say it was raining, I don’t mean a drizzle, it was like the showerhead was on.

We finally settled in Mexico City (at least for the next 3 days). Our mission for today was simple, in theory. Find spare front and rear tires for the bike. Searching online didn’t really help much, so we called the hotel and they gave us 3 places somewhat nearby to try. One place didn’t answer, another only had one of the tires. And the other didn’t have any.

Cynthia was manning the phone making the calls as my Spanish is more like Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to speak Japanese (maybe even worse). After making endless calls to businesses in the phone book, she found one place that had both the front and rear tire and a Honda dealership that had the rear tire at a better price and another dealer that had the front tire at a better price but not the rear. Aside from one Bridgestone tire, the only matching front and rear tires available in the right sizes for the Suzuki GS850 were Pirelli MT66.

I have always run dual sport tires on this bike because we simply have no idea what roads we’re going to encounter, and I personally like to go off the beaten path if possible. MT66 tires are just  bland road tires which I wasn’t hoping for, but we had no choice. I figured if we can’t find a decent tire in the biggest city in the continent, we’re probably not going to have too much luck further South. (Well, I was wrong. As I write this, we’ve found much better prices and selections in practically every country in Central America but Mexico.)

We got directions and headed out on our tire hunt. When we arrived at Motos De Calidad, our first American stunt was to tell the dealer, Carmelo Ruiz Garcia, about the competitors’ prices. Mr. Garcia ended up reducing the prices to match his competitors. Score!

You would think that purchasing tires would be a relatively straightforward task. However, we waited and waited and waited while the employees took phone calls and served customers in between looking for our tires. After all, it turned out that they didn’t have the rear tires as they had told us on the phone. We finally decided we would buy the front tires from them and go to the Honda dealer for the rear tires. I also decided to buy two sets of tires as I would need to change the current pair in about another 1000 miles, somewhere after getting past Guatemala. The dealer offered to call Honda and see if they had the tires and upon confirming that they did, offered to arrange for them to be delivered for us to the dealer.  This was great for us as that meant that we only had to drive to one more location, the bank, to get cash for our better rate on the tires. They told us to be back in an hour and a half.

We headed off to the bank down the road to get some cash. Once there, I was told that I had to belong to the bank to withdraw cash inside and could only get cash from the cash machine. The ATM machine was inside a little room with a glass door and you have to slide your bank card in the door to open it. It took me three tries to withdraw the pesos as apparently, you have to take cash out of your checking account and not the saving. With money in hand, we headed back to the dealer to wait for the tires to be delivered.

On the last traffic light, a city bus rear-ended us while we were completely stopped. I managed to keep the bike upright and thank god the damage was minimal. It hit us right on the corner of the right aluminum pannier and broke the mount. Luckily the stove fuel bottle was inside the hotel that day otherwise it would have blown up the pressurized can. Since then I relocated the fuel bottle to the front.

While waiting at the dealer I tried on nearly every helmet they had in the store. I wear an open-face helmet and I love it. I love the freedom it gives me, the taste of the bugs, the sharp needlelike sensation of cold rain, the frozen cheeks in snow… actually I don’t even know why I wear an open face helmet.  It’s the rainy season here and it rains and rains and rains… and then it rains some more. I decided that I was tired of getting rain on my face, and Cynthia was tired of me borrowing her full-face helmet at the first sign of rain. So I ended up getting a nice Italian Flip-Up modular helmet made by Nolan Group. It’s not available in the States, but it’s a very nice helmet. Better yet, it was only $140. I’m protected for the next city bus who tries to run us over.

By the end of the day we had two sets of tires and a helmet. I have to say that the dealer who helped us went above and beyond with reducing the price for the tires and then arranging their delivery to us. All told, our mission took from 11 am to 7:30 p.m. Thank God we had a “free” day from traveling on the road to take care of this important little bit of housekeeping.

Today Mr. Murphy had another plan for us as everything that could go wrong, went wrong! We didn’t head out of San Luis Potosi until around 3 pm as the electric car apparently didn’t get fully charged as one of the circuit breakers had switched off at some point during the night so the car had to charge more during the day to make the trip to Mexico City. As we were caravanning out of the city, the support van made a left turn into an alley and indicated for the electric car and our motorcycle to do a U-turn. As I followed the electric car, I didn’t realize that there was a Federal Police sitting behind me at the stoplight. He turned on his lights and started to scream in the bullhorn in Spanish to pull me over (like I knew what the hell he was saying) and promptly started reading me the riot act! Thankfully Cynthia’s fast-talking in Spanish got me off with just an evil eye and stern warning to “Respect the signs!”

Afternoon rains came again without fail, and somehow when we stopped to put on rain gear and switch helmets so that I could wear Cynthia’s full-face helmet, we didn’t see whether or not the van and electric car passed us. We stayed by the roadside waiting a good 30 minutes and then decided to go on. By then it was dark. No sooner were we back on the road than we encountered another toll station. This is where things got interesting. When we crossed into México, I didn’t bother to bring any cash with me, and all I had was about a $100. I figured I would get money out of ATM in México but the past few days were so hectic that I completely forgot to do so. The toll was 5 dollars but all I had was $1.50 in cold hard cash. Cynthia begged for the guy to let us go through and promised we would wait by the road for the electric car and the van to come through so that they could pay for the rest of our toll. We pulled off by the roadside to wait as huge trucks careened on by. After another 30 minutes or so it was apparent that either the rest of the caravan had already gone on through or they were broken down somewhere behind us.

It was pitch black, cold, raining in sheets, and we were still about 100 miles from Mexico City.  I wasn’t relishing driving aimlessly in the dark not knowing where we were going. My plan was to find the closest hotel and stop for the night, but first we had to pay the toll if we wanted to move another inch as they were watching us like hawks. We started digging in every pocket and every box to scrape up just enough change in US pennies, nickels and dimes to pay the rest of the toll but we were still short a full dollar. I have a lucky silver dollar that I’ve had for 17 years which I take with me everywhere. With much regret, I handed it to Cynthia to pay up the man as that was our only salvation. Cynthia paid the toll and we continued on our way.  As we were running out of fuel, we stopped at the next gas station to find team hanging out there! Apparently, the electric car had run out of charge again and so for the next 4-6 hours we sat around in the gas station while the car charged up.  Thankfully they had a deli counter where they made delicious Tortas (Mexican sandwich) to order. After a full belly and a beer or two at the station, Cynthia surprised me by procuring my lucky silver dollar. Somehow she managed to get us through without giving up my silver dollar after all. That was enough to put a smile on my face for the rest of the night.

At 3 a.m. the car was charged enough to continue so we packed up once more to enter the biggest city in the Americas in a torrential rain and pitch black skies. You can see the lights of México City from miles away and the traffic starts long before reaching the city itself. Struggling to stay awake, we rode into the city at 5 a.m. as the local food vendors were preparing breakfast on the roadside. The rain stopped, the sun started to come out and we were safe at last.