Zacatecas rules! What a fabulous city! We reside in the wonderful Hostal Villa Colonial – a very old town house next to the adobe coloured cathedral. From the roof terrace you can look over the beautiful old town with its narrow cobbled streets, the personal is more than friendly and speaks some 112 languages more or less fluently. We got welcomed with a “Grüezi, willkommen!” before we even had gotten out of the car and since the jèfe knows about the wishes of world-travelers, he moved some domestic cars so that we had a parking spot directly in front of the hostel.

This, however, did not help much and in the second night at 4am we got woken up by the night-guard asking us whether “la camioneta azul” belonged to us.

At first, I could hardly believe that once again a window had been smashed – I did not hear the alarm and there was literally nothing in the car to be stolen.

I had to face reality: for the third time during the so far 8 months lasting Panmundo trip, some idiot had broken a window.

Funny wise, this time was sort of relaxed; even feeling some malicious joy when I realized that nothing had been stolen at all and that the thief must have cut himself quite badly since there was lot of blood between the glass splinters in the street.

However, let’s face it: the concept does not work. These criminal minds do not see much of risk to smash a window, even if there is alarm going off. In the best case, the alarm limits the time in the car, but it does not prevent them from smashing a window and double-check whether there is really nothing to steal. THIS CALLS FOR ACTION!

In the next morning Guillermo, one of the hostel managers, told us that he would help us in whatever way he could. And he did. Suddenly things got sped up in normally easy-peacy Mexico. Up the street there was a glazier who promised to make a custom made window out of un-breakable Plexiglas. We then drove across the city through an uncounted amount of narrow one-way streets in order to source the Plexiglass. In Mexico you don’t go to an anonymous supermarket or “do it yourself center” – you buy in small, family owned stores where the people are extremely competent and friendly. Each time we got involved in a short chat, negotiated about the price because you are supposed to do so (at the end our tip generally was better than what we had gotten of the price) and left quite happily. Each time?

Well, after the glass-job was done, we headed to Vance, a white-haired American who owns “TumbaBurros De Zacatecas”, an off-road outfitter in Zacatecas. This guy is very bright – before we could explain what we wanted, he showed us pictures of a police SUV he had prepared for a trip to Jurassic Park or so. All the windows were barred; even the windshield had a foldable grid. Here we go: in two days from now the Land-Cruiser should be impregnable. In your face, thieves!

After we had a deal with Vance, we drove back to the hostel to meet “Alfred el Magico”, a Michigan based Texas guy who rides his motorcycle down to country-region Guatemala together with Shane, his friend. Before he had started his Ph.D. in econometrics, he had worked as a car mechanic. He helped us to fix our rear lights which still denied to work without burning a fuse all 5 minutes. David and I had spent a considerable amount of time under the car checking wires, connections and sealing everything with tape and an amount of silicone Pamela Anderson would be impressed.

However, everything seemed dry and alright – but it did not work.

Alfred backtracked the cable for the rear lights from the fuse box – and identified a more or less melted cable. “Cables don’t just melt – somewhere there must be a reason for” he said. However, having a consulting background, I decided to ignore the cause and head straight for the solution. Therefore we cut the melting cable, connected a new cable to the fuse box and ran it back to the lights separately. This, we thought, should work since the back-lights as such worked properly. The real problem must be a connection on the way back – but who cares?; there is no electricity in the old cable anymore.

It worked out and finally the Cruiser can cruise during night-time again. Meantime Guillermo was pressing to head for the next job: we tinted the back-windows at a guy who runs a mobile shop just next to a carretera, a motorway. Working in the dark he was extremely fast: after 15 minutes we had tinted windows, gave the guy 15 bucks including a 3 $ tip and headed of to fix a tyre which was screwed (it had inhaled a long screw).

In another small calle (=street) we stopped at a run-down house. In one minute a whole pit-stop infrastructure emerged from the small door: a fat lady with a nice face took of the injured tyre and balanced it one her little finger while walking back to her house. We blocked half the street, but in Mexico people react relaxed when a driver decides to change tyres in the middle of the street. 10 minutes and 3 bucks later our tyre was repaired and we headed for dinner.

Honestly, I don’t think that I would have been able to complete so many tasks in one day back home in Switzerland. More over, I would be bankrupt by now.

Viva Mexico!

(Ps: Check the pic of our "tank"!)