Читать книгу No One Said It Would Be Easy - Des Molloy - Страница 51

44

Mexico

sanctioning the All Blacks’ tour of apartheid South Africa earlier in the year had continuing ramifications. In addition to 25 African nations boycotting the Olympic Games in Montreal, it seems others are not issuing travel or work documentation to Kiwis. We’d known this was a problem when Mark Te Tau from my team had scored a highly-paid job in Saudi because of his specialist farming background in NZ. Thrilled with what was unfolding for him, he’d chosen the colour of the new Triumph Stag he was going to buy. Sadly, the visa never came through and when we had left London he was still waiting … and still dreaming of the sleek sports car.

Life was good, the weather hot, the road-side food cheap and nourishing. The sudden exposure to a hot sun was playing havoc with my exposed nose. With the use of open-face helmets, we were getting hit with both wind and sun. My snout soon blistered and peeled. Of course, this left it tender, raw and ready for the process to start again. Our kit didn't include any unguents or salves to preclude or alleviate this. It was presumed that I would harden up sooner or later. The harmful effects of the sun weren’t known to us at the time … we were young and ignorant of many things. The language barrier was a minor one as we always managed to find our way and locate fuel and food. It would have been nice to have a Spanish dictionary or phrase-book but locating one and spending money on it didn’t seem a priority. Things were good the way they were, and what you don’t know sometimes can be a benefit. One night we had occasion to have to put the tent up very close to the road-side, in full view of anyone passing along the way. At some stage in the night, we hear voices outside the tent, not threatening voices, just curious ones. We respond to their salutations best we can, but it is obvious there is a disconnect. A voice calls “Muy peligrosa, muy peligrosa!” That sounds pretty good to us, so we respond “Muy peligrosa” a couple of times and ultimately they pass on and we resettle, happy with our meaningful interface.

A few days later we are riding in the mountains and on several occasions encounter signage before sharp downhill bends which also use the word peligrosa. It comes to us slowly that our night-time visitors had been telling us that where we were camped was ‘Very Dangerous!’

For motorcyclists the perfect ride is infrequent — when the temperature is just right, the road surface is good, the traffic minimal, the radii of the bends matched to the bike you are riding etc. When this happens it is nirvana. For Penelope and I, we hit this heightened state on our last day before Mexico City. Mexico City sits