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Tail of Whoa in Mexico - By Hanz Scholz
After five years, this incident on our honeymoon in Oaxaca
Mexico still amazes me and is still focused down to a
few short, tense and terrifying minutes. We had taken
a 12-hour bus ride to Zipolita on the Pacific coast with
our Air
Glides and trailers. We had been warned that it was
not a good idea to ride after dark, but we had been sitting
so long and it was only 13 km down the road, so we decided
to load up our trailers and head out.
We only had tiny little Mini Mag® lights. They work OK, we could be seen, but not
see. We had to ask directions on the way out of Portutla on how to get to Zipolita.
In retrospect, this may have been our error. We proceeded into a lovely tropical
evening with the sun setting in the distance, just 13 km to paradise. It got fully
dark in about 20 minutes. After 11 km I saw a dark VW bug go by slowly and then
speed up around the next curve. A minute later we rounded the same curve to find
four guys coming toward us on the road.
They grabbed Lisa first. I admit, it was so dark I didn't know what was happening
for a moment. Then they grabbed my bike. I had time to jump off, but couldn't
avoid the little guy with the big stick. He kept pointing at me and yelling. I
finally figured out that he wanted my backpack. I almost never ride with a back
pack and this turned out to be a good thing, all it contained was a camera and
some family planning accouterments. I was happy to hand it over. But the bugger
wasn't satisfied. Oh no, he wanted my precious watch with the calculator buttons,
scheduler, world time and the ability to store 50 phone numbers. Egad, I'd paid
$20 dollars for that watch and my life was stored in it. I handed it over. This
seemed to satisfy him and then - he commenced to bash at my bike with his big
stick. I'm still not sure why. I remember thinking, that won't do any damage.
Now that my tormentor had turned his attention to my hapless
bike, I notice that Lisa had actually been fighting these
guys the whole time. She still had her backpack on! My
first word of encouragement was: GIVE THEM THE XXXXING
BACK PACK! I think that it was about this time that she
noticed one of the little fellows accosting her didn't
have a stick, he had a machete. At this point I would
have been happy to be standing in the middle of the road
naked and alive, because it didn't look good. Seconds
later, we see a set of headlights coming down the road
from the opposite direction.
I began to yell in my best Spanish accent that we needed
help disparately. Lisa was doing the same except she was
actually speaking Spanish. The Taxi slowed and several
people rubbernecked out the window and then sped on. This
spooked the 4 robbers and they jumped the guard rail.
At the end of it all, they didn't harm bikes or trailer,
missed the money belts and left us with only emotional
scars. We made it to Zipolita finally. It was just at
the bottom of the hill. Maybe Hawaii wasn't such a bad
idea after all. |
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