Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
circumstances to maintain my 85 kilometres a day, but I'm doing it,
most days anyway.
On the sides of the roads are crosses, little makeshift memorials
to those killed there. There have been scores of them along the way.
I'm not surprised: the roads are dreadful. Mexico is a poor country. The
edges have been washed away by the heavy rains and not repaired.
One slip, and you could find yourself free-falling into a deep ravine.
And this is the wet season: every day there is torrential rain, thunder
and lightning, and the roads are literally falling apart before my eyes.
august 19
I woke up today thinking that this was going to be a day like any other.
A bit blasé, perhaps, but the days all meld into each other. However, it
turned out to be one I will never forget. Today, I came as close to death
as I have been since I began this run, and probably as close as I have
been in my life. It happened on an innocuous stretch of Highway 200.
We were at the 25-kilometre mark, and all day we had been on
roads that had been ravaged by the recent heavy rains. The potholes
and half-hearted attempts at repair by road crews were making driving
hard for us and others on the road, and I was aware of some drivers
being distracted, angry and impatient. I was running easily and stead-
ily. Bernie in his Winnebago was directly behind me, and following
him were two escort vehicles, while the other two were up ahead. Sud-
denly, I heard a screech of brakes and turned round to see a dirty big
semitrailer smash into the front left corner of Bernie's Winnebago. The
semi somehow came off worse: it careened off course. The driver over-
corrected, and suddenly it was airborne, then sliding on its side down
the road, heading at great speed in my direction. Sparks were flying,
and the noise of metal on bitumen was terrible. My reflexes kicked
in, and I dived headlong into a gully and landed hard. The out-of-
control semi missed me by a metre or so and powered on for another
60 metres, then came to a stop on its side, like a wounded dinosaur,
blocking both lanes of the road. The smell of smoke and dust and fuel
filled the air. I climbed out of the gully and ran to where the semi was,
hoping the fuel tanks would not explode. Bernie, badly shaken like
me, but unhurt, ran to the semi too. To our astonishment, the driver
emerged from the cabin with only a few cuts and bruises.
