The impact was strong enough to knock me off my feet and onto my back. I should have had a morning coffee. Maybe if it hadn’t been raining. Maybe if the guy backing the truck up had any sense to maybe check his mirrors before throwing his truck into reverse and nearly ending my life.
We were touring a palm oil plant near Palenque, México with our friends Felipe, Juan and Jesús (yes, I was indeed walking with Jesús when I got hit by a truck) and I stopped to take a photo at the edge of the paved entry where the trucks come in to drop the locally harvested palm nuts. I don’t know where the truck even came from but it certainly got my attention.
I’ve fallen hard many times in my life: into the boards in hockey, off my bicycle, off skateboards, rollerblades…but I’ve never felt an impact like this morning. I found myself on my left side on the ground and had no idea how I got there but I somehow knew to roll away from the impact and it most likely saved my life as the truck just kept on coming.
By this time, the security guards at the gate were yelling at the driver to stop but still he kept reversing. Holly and our friends kept on walking and had no idea any of this was going on so when they turned toward the yelling, they couldn’t see me at first because the still-moving truck was between us so thankfully, Holly didn’t see any of this. My adrenaline allowed me to rise from the ground and let the truck pass by just a few feet away, but the wind was gone from my lungs and I slumped to the ground on one knee, stunned.
I could hear Jesús asking me what happened, did I fall? The guards approached and told them what happened as I now found my wind and used it to yell at the driver of the truck in Spanish. “Open your eyes! Open your eyes!” He barely acknowledged me. I felt bad at creating a scene and quickly told Felipe, “I’ve been hit harder than that,” trying to laugh it off. But in reality, I was truly shaken. It happened so fast and could have been so much worse…with Holly just steps away. I had Holly check my back where I landed for bruising (swollen but no discolouration) but oddly there’s no pain and no mark whatsoever on the side where the truck slammed into me, aside from a large dirty scuff mark on my riding shirt. I limped around for a few seconds, working out the kinks and then walked in the rain over to the motorcycle, dug out my arnica tablets and self-medicated myself. Lucky, lucky boy today…
We then left and I followed Felipe in his truck through a windy narrow back road in a harder rain to the town of Zapata where we were invited to attend his grandmother’s 88th birthday party. Met most of his family, ate my weight in fantastic local foods, enjoyed the full mariachi band they hired to surprise grandma and then, as if we’d dreamt it all, Holly and I were once again rocketing deeper into Mexico, bound for the beautiful Laguna Bacalar near Chetumal. The rains stopped after about two hours and the weather finally turned nice as the sun began to set. Spent the riding hours moving among potholes again, over speed bumps in every tiny village and marvelling at how beautiful every day on the road has been so far in Mexico.
Saw multiple road signs warning of various things that may present a danger to drivers: cattle, pedestrians, jumping antlered deer and…bats. Yes, bats. Apparently they must be a menace after dark here. I was hoping for a vampire sign after the bats sign but the highway department obviously doesn’t share my sense of humour.
Spotted the usual assortment of dead, flattened dogs along the route but today also brought us our first dead horse, sprawled across the front of an abandoned bus shelter in the cane fields near Xpujil. There were six or seven large buzzards having a fiesta on its bloated carcass.
This is the Center of the Mayan world, with signs everywhere pointing to the roads that lead off the main route to sites like Becan, Rio Bec and my local favourite, Kohunlich. We are still greeted in many tiny villages like a couple of astronauts floating past. We do tend to generate second looks, especially when we stop and Holly removes her helmet. People just aren’t expecting to see a girl her age down here. She continues to amaze me everyday with her unflappability.
Close Call
