Mauritius Part 2: First Local Contact

Our first day driving went almost perfectly to plan – we were 3 minutes early to the first meeting and about 5 minutes late to the other.  The second day was not so great.  We started our first meeting three hours late.  This might have had something to do with me parking the car into a gutter.  Not driving, mind you; parking the car into a gutter.

We were already one and a half hours late and now (yet again) lost in Port Louis, my boss and I decided to take stock, pull over and call our local contact.  As I pulled over, I thought that the gutter was smaller than it was.  Actually it was the perfect width for our car tyre.

“KER-LUNK.” Followed closely by, “Oh shit.”

“Merde!” My boss looks at me, stunned.  He half drops his jaw and half-raises his eyebrows whilst opening his eyes in a shocked stare right back at me.  Kind of like a reaction whilst swimming in a public pool and watching a kid’s turd float past.

He got out of the car and surveyed the situation.  The wheel is down into the gutter.  “Try and reverse it out!” he shouted to me. I try. Nothing.  I too get out of the car to survey the situation.

So we stand there with our hands on our hips looking at this wheel stuck in the drain. “We’re so screwed,” it screams to me in no uncertain terms. I called our colleagues to update them on the situation.

Then, almost on cue, a guy turns up in a truck – he’s parking next door.  He looks over at these two stressed out foreigners with what looks like a little interest, so I ran up to him and ask him for help.  He looked like quite a nice fellow (or maybe he’s just amused with the sight of two foreigners and a car stuck in the gutter), so anyway, like us he got out of his truck and has a look at the situation.

“You need a rock,” he said rather simply.  

“A rock?” Both my boss and I say incredulously to each other.

Simultaneously contemplating the various parameters of car size, tyre size, and size of hole, he quietly and calmly adds, “wait here”, before he disappears into his property.

“A ROCK?” We say again to each other, this time with other words that follow but are unrepeatable here.  We waited anxiously.

The guy came lumbering back with a rectangular brick, which he dropped into the gutter. It fits almost perfectly.  Too perfectly.  Simultaneously, another guy on a motorbike turns up.  Our new friend adjusted the brick right up against the tyre and gave me instructions to try and reverse over it then turn hard left to then move out of the gutter.

I fire up the Honda and try to get it out.  No luck.  The new guy who just turned up, is rather impatient with my poor gutter exit technique and tells me to get out of the car.  He gets in and with a pop of the clutch, the car comes out of the gutter. 

Success!  Cheers and handshakes all round.

At this point, my boss looked extremely relieved.  I guess all of a sudden, that turd in the pool happened to be something much less organic.

Of course, I thanked the two guys profusely. My boss, without even hesitating, insists I give them a couple of hundred rupees but these guys weren’t having any of it.

“No, no, you needed help and we were please to give it!”

“But I insist!”

“No, we insist! Enjoy Mauritius!”

“OK, but at the very least, let me take a photo of you: I want to remember you two guys…”

(Unfortunately, I have no photo of the rock.  As you can imagine, I was more than a little nervous as a couple of guys were trying to get my car out of a gutter.)