Day 116
I got up early and got ready to head off before 7 am as I knew that I had to contend with the unfinished road and the stone chip and gravel sections on my return from the coast. I left my hotel but as I was just about at the edge of town I got another puncture in my back tyre.
So once again I got the back wheel off and the punctured tube out. I checked the tyre again but again I could find nothing that could have caused the puncture. I examined the tube and found a small cut to the centre of the tube meaning that whatever cut it was from the tyre side and not the wheel rim.
Once I replaced the tube with the spare that I had bought the day before I again set off thinking that I would be okay for that day. However, 11 miles out of town and I got another puncture to the back tyre. This time I had no spare tube so I took the wheel off, took out the tube and patched it. It did not hold.
I was now stranded in 35 degree heat with no shade and only 1 litre of water.
I sat for a while trying to figure out if there was anything that I could do but the heat was now getting to me as I had been exerting myself and sweating profusely for a while. Eventually I decided that I needed to get back to Puerto Cabeza so I flagged down a passing taxi but he could not help as he was going to pick someone up. I had now been sitting at the side of the road for about an hour when I saw a truck heading in the direction of the town.
I flagged the truck down and asked the driver if he could take me and my bags in to town so that I could arrange a bike shop to come back and pick up the bike. The driver told me that I should not leave the bike unattended and offered to put the bike in the back of his truck. So the driver, his 3 helpers who were sitting in the back of the truck and I lifted my bike on to the truck which was carrying a load of sand.
Once we got in to town the driver took me to a tyre repair shack that he knew and then the guys unloaded my bike so that I could get the puncture fixed.
I had a similar puncture problem with the front tyre on my previous bike in Europe in 2022 and like this, there was no obvious cause for the punctures such as something sticking in the tyre. I asked the tyre repair guy to have a look at the tyre to see if he could see what was causing the punctures but he could not see anything obvious. I decided to buy a new tyre as I didn’t want any more punctures and fortunately for me there was a small bike shop across the road from where I had been dropped off.
The shop was run by a father and his son, Apolinar and Dillan, and they were able to sell me a new back tyre and a new tube for about $60. The guys in the tyre shop then set about fixing the bike. Within 30 minutes the bike had been sorted and was sporting a very knobbly new back tyre.
The guy who operated the tyre repair place fitted the new tyre and tube, patched the freshly punctured tube so that I had a spare, for $15. By this time it was about 12 noon so I bought the guys a 6 pack of cold beer and took a photo of them before I set off. Dillan then gave me a Puerto Cabeza motorcycle club sticker because he is member of that club and I stuck it to the read mudguard as a memento.
I was now ready to continue my journey so I pushed the starter button … nothing happened.
The bike would not start. I spent about an hour trying to figure out what was causing the problem and then I gave up.
I asked Apolinar and Dillan if I could leave the bike in their shop overnight and I told them that I would return in the morning to have another go at fixing the starting problem. They very kindly agreed so I pushed the bike over to their shop and parked it inside.
Fortunately for me there was a taxi getting one of his tyres changed at the tyre place and he agreed to take me back to the hotel that I had checked out of a few hours earlier. Luckily when I got to the hotel they had a room available so I paid for 2 nights to give me time to sort the bike out.
I spent a quiet night at the hotel trying to figure out the starting problem and then I remembered that on some Himalayan bikes the poor quality factory fitted electrical relays had caused starting issues, so with that knowledge I knew that was my first task in the morning. I also decided that if I could I would replace the front tyre with a new one, just in case!
I got to the bike shop at about 9 am and had a look at the relays. I swapped them about and hey presto the bike started. Since I had a whole day to kill I asked Apolinar and Dillan if they could sell me a new front tyre and a after a few phone calls a new front tyre was on its way to the shop. Apolinar made me some coffee whilst I waited on the tyre arriving and shortly after I had finished my coffee the new front tyre was delivered to the shop at a cost of about $49.
Then I took the tyre over to the tyre guy to have it fitted whilst Dillon took my bike for a spin as he had never ridden a Himalayan before. When Dillan arrived at the tyre place my new front tyre was fitted at no cost but I gave the tyre guy 200 Cordobas ($6) anyway.
So now the bike was sporting a very knobbly front tyre as well as a very knobbly back tyre.
Apolinar and Dillan very kindly posed for a photo outside of their shop with my bike.
I said my thanks and farewells and as I was heading back to the hotel I decided to get the bike washed to get all of the sand that had attached itself to the bike after being in the back of the truck washed off.
Now hopefully I could continue with my trip without any further tyre issues.