We came upon a couple of unfortunate events when we went to Majahual yesterday.
First - we always go directly to the gas station (the only one...) to fill-up the car, and pulling out of there we saw a police officer on his little motocycle, driving away from town (there is only one road). So we hit the road, the town is only 4km from the gas station. Suddenly Tim notices that the cop is making his way back, and is about to pass up on the right shoulder... okay, hello officer! He signals to pull over... bummer. He asks for Tim's lisense, and as he contemplates it, he casually asks where we're going (one road... only one possible destination... this is ridiculous) I politely answer his questions, and he explains that this is a 50km zone and that we were going quite fast. He will have to write a ticket, and keep our lisense - and we will have to go settle this in Chetumal (the capital city of the state - a 3 hour drive). So I try to get out of this, telling him that there is no way we can make it to Chetumal on Friday. He just repeats the whole thing... not rude, just plain sleazy. So I pull out my wallet and ask him if we can settle this, handing out a 200 pesos bill ($20). 'I don't want problems later' he tells me. I answer 'There is no problem here'. He smiles and discretely takes the bill, and tells me to mind the speed limit. Goodbye officer!
We went to town and had lunch, explored a bit since it was a rainy day, and then I went to school to give my class (great turnout - 20 kids!). We split immediately after to catch as much daylight as possible for the road home. Not quite half way to Xcalak, on the road in the middle of nowhere - a flat tire. About 30 minutes of daylight left... we never changed a tire. Get the spare out, try to figure out how to work the crank and where the heck we should put it to jack the car... this is not good! Oh, a car is coming! Get he kids off the road, make sure that they see us... they stop and ask if we need help. Thank God! Father and son from a little town I can not pronounce, kindly get to work and change our tire in 10 minutes. When they're done they wish us a safe trip and go back to their truck - feeling good about helping a little family of gringos. They were such nice guys, Tim gave them a CD - not sure if they will listen to it but it's exciting to think that they will - in their little town which has a name with no vowels whatsoever. We were very lucky.
With that we got home later than expected, tired and concerned. We want to go spend the weekend in Chetumal, and we do have to get that tire fixed (or replaced...), and the muffler of our car is about to fall off and the road here is... hummmm... very punctuated! It appears that we can take care of the tire here in town today, Good Gabriel will help us.
On to better things... Banana Cream Pie recipe coming later today!
http://www.maplandia.com/mexico/quintana-roo/othon-p-blanco/xcalak/
Very punctuated roads lead to very punctured tires!
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