A few days later, my bike had been fixed. The mechanic, noting how uneasy we all looked having lost nearly a week on our cylinders, attempted to reassure us. “No tendrá más problemas, te lo garantizo!”

We rode out. Within a few kilometers, my front brake started dragging. We rolled to another mechanic, who bled some fluid out and sent us on our way. Utterly unconvinced about the long-term effectiveness of this solution, we continued warily. Before long, my engine was making clicking noises again.

“Hey Didier, why are you making all that smoke come out of your engine?”

Drat.

Within minutes, my engine had lost all compression and we found ourselves once again on the side of the road, swearing profusely. History was fresh in our minds, but it appeared that the universe had doomed us to repeat it regardless. We attached the tow strap and continued slowly into the next town.

The first mechanic we stopped at was, as before, completely spaced out on coca leaves. We had not yet learned to avoid these mechanics, and maintaining hope that he could fix the issue, complied with his increasingly ridiculous demands. Wheel the bike into the shop. Okay, now dismount the engine. Good, now take the valve cover off. Timing chain too. What, your bike doesn’t have pushrods?

Alex and I disassembling my engine, while our “mechanic” searches for his missing wits in the bottom of a bag of coca leaves. They’re not there.

Before long, it became clear that this absolutely gormless buffoon of a ‘mechanic’ had no idea what he was doing, and was hoping that we would fix the engine ourselves and pay him for the privilege. We had the entire top end of the engine disassembled before he finally came clean regarding his cluelessness, and advised us to pack up and go to a better mechanic. At least, during the disassembly, we had been able to diagnose the issue — the previous mechanic had not torqued a cylinder head nut enough, it’d come undone, and an important gasket had blown as a result.

By the time we had the bike reassembled and towed to another mechanic, night had fallen. We explained the issue and, failing to find a properly sized gasket, he set about modifying a non-fitting one using a file and a tube of liquid gasket. By midnight, he had finished and, with the help of some partying locals who had the phone number of an unfortunate sleeping hostel owner, we’d secured accommodation.

We were now desperately behind schedule.

We were on the road by 6:30 the next morning. It would be tight, but we calculated that if we had no more major setbacks, we could still make it back to Huanuco in time for Tibet and Alex’s flight home. All we needed was for the Adventure Motorcycling Gods to end this streak of bad luck and mechanical failure.

At 8:30, as we rolled into the last town before the road works, my engine started making the clicking sounds again, and rain started pouring from the skies.

“Guys, can you hear this?”

“Yes.”

“What should we do?”

“Carry on, I guess.”

“Good plan! Then after 20km, my bike’s gonna break down again, and we’ll be stuck in the mud with a broken bike, smacking our heads and shouting ‘fuck! If only, somehow, we could have foreseen this!’”

“Oh come on Didier, stop being dramatic.”

I was wrong. We went not 20, but 36km before the engine siezed. I smacked my head. “Fuck! If only, somehow, we could have foreseen this!”