Unplanned Breakie/Spicy rest in Panuria

The only running issues that we’ve had with Spicy (knock wood) is what seems like a vapor lock/air bubble in the fuel line situation every once in a while in the heat of the day. After a short slow down or a bit of a rest to cool down she is good to go.

Today we experienced it earlier than normal, and luckily it happened on a country road where we could wait in the shade. I’ll tell you why I’m not worried about being stuck for long if we have a breakdown - we stand out like a sore thumb and it doesn’t take long at all before someone turns around and comes back to check us out.

In this case a taxi driver came back, lined up his tuk tuk behind ours and drove pushing us with his foot!! He pushed us 1km to a petrol station, but we explained that we had half a tank still, so he pushed us another 1km to the town where there was a mechanic. We were told that the mechanic would come to us in 10 minutes, and luckily we were stopped in front of a little bakery where we had samosas and a sweet baked good for breakfast. Our chai tea came in a tiny unglazed clay cup with a volume of maybe 2-3 tablespoons, and they throw out the cups when you are done!

When the mechanic finally arrived, of course Spicy started right up and ran like a champ. We wanted to make sure it wasn’t a fuel filter issue, but by the time we did a short test drive and came back, the mechanic was gone again. Oh well!

As we headed out of town there were a couple of police at a busy traffic bottleneck, and we’d just read that if police want you to stop, it’s easier to pretend you didn’t hear and keep going than go through potential hassles. The police officer pulled aside a gate so we could drive through, but then a second and apparently higher ranking officer said “Stop! Stop!” and motioned us to pull over. We felt pretty obligated at that point, so we stopped. Lucky for us he was just super curious about where we were from and where we are going! I gave him one of our stickers, and he gave us his phone number and said to call him if we have any troubles!! How lucky are we?!Read more