Bomberos

On this trip, we've met with some really heart-warming generosity; the kind that restores your faith in humanity, and utterly rejects the picture that the world is full of dangerous places and bad people (which anyone would be forgiven for thinking after just a week consuming a good dose of our national press).  Part of what has made this generosity so striking to us is that people aren’t reaching out to us because of who we are, that they’ve taken pity on us, or a shine to our good humour ;) it is just because we are fellow humans (albeit that come by recomendation because we are travelling by bike).

The warm showers community, which we’ve mentioned before, as a network of people that host cyclists, is a good example of this, but there have also been so many from the road.  Just the other day we stopped to ask an old lady if there was somewhere we could get something to eat in the village as we passed through.  She sat us down, pulled up a couple of chairs and in 3 minutes we had a full steaming plate of food in front of us.  When she rejected payment, we were left unsure of how to thank her for this kindness (why is it that money is our go to way to show value for something?)

But nowhere has this kindness been more in evidence, and basically institutionalised, than with the ‘Bomberos’ (firefighters) throughout Central America. For some reason, which we are yet to really understand, they have a tradition of letting cycle tourists stay with them.  This is definitely about firefighters rather than emergency services in general (we once found ourselves asking for shelter at a police station and they certainly weren’t going to let us camp in their porch) but extends through all the countries in Central America, despite there being no real link between the organisations.

Our lovely captain ('El Jefe') in Santa Cruz

This was something we only really discovered by word-of-mouth from other cycle tourists we have met - it is almost like an unwritten law, an omertá, a secret pact - and a wonderful one.

On all bar one occasion, they have let us stay with them. And, on all bar one occasion when we’ve turned up it has been absolutely chucking it down with rain. Staying with them might mean just allowing us to camp safely behind their gates or under some form of cover from the elements. It has usually meant having use of a shower and their kitchen. Sometimes we can use their WiFi. Once it even meant sleeping in an air-conditioned room. All with no charge, and not ever accepting an offer of a donation. 

The bomberos vary in size, structure and frequency across the countries we have cycled. In some places, such as Nicaragua, they are entirely staffed by volunteers - society-minded individuals, keen to help others. Elsewhere, they are better funded, for example, the Costa Rican Bomberos were a particularly interesting bunch - spun off from the government, they are now self-funded, with a long and very proud history. The vast majority of their funds come from an additional premium on insurance policies which has funded some pretty impressive and modern looking fortresses.

A Bomberos 'Fortress' in Costa Rica

Used, as they are, to cyclists, on the whole we’ll have a good/confusing chat on arrival in stilted Spanish, where they’ll ask where we’ve come from and we won’t understand if they mean that day, or life in general (the constant existential crisis!); we’ll try and remember where on earth we are and the name of the town we slept in the night before, which invariably is lost to us in the large pile of not quite remembered place names that litter our minds.  They’ll ask where we are going, we’ll earnestly say we are going all the way to Ecuador, and they’ll dismissively tell us about all the other cyclists who’ve come through who have gone to Argentina. It’s all done with big smiles. Then they tend to leave us to the important business of cleaning, eating and sleeping, and we leave them to, well, fighting fires.

Whilst we yearned to try it on, we didn't think they needed
two children charging round their station in fancy dress

A donation from Canada

The one place this experience was so entirely different, and an incredible experience of kindness was in the small town of Sarapiqui (see - I remembered it!) in Costa Rica. We had just endured one of the toughest days on the trip. There had been torrential rain all day and we were cold and drenched. We turned up with Ali bleeding profusely from a hole in his elbow, having skidded and crashed on a muddy section of road on his old, bald tyres; Lizzie had cycled the last 40km with only two gears, her rear gear shifter having totally gone AWOL. Having checked with 'El Jefe' (the Boss) the two bomberos on duty, Johnny and ‘Mambo’ set to work on us.

Johnny working on Ali

Johnny’s first responder instinct clearly kicked in, and he was treating Ali in no time.  Whilst Mambo’s inner mechanic was quite taken by the problem with Lizzie’s gears. Thus ensued a full diagnosis of the bike and several hours of tinkering, attempted welding and various bodge jobs to deal with the broken shifter. After a number of failed attempts to find a workable fix, Johnny went home and cut his own shifters off his mountain bike, rendering it completely unusable, and fitted these to Lizzie’s bike, allowing her to use 18 of her 20 gears. We couldn’t believe the sacrifice and tried to give Johnny some money (again, the obvious but totally insubstantial mechanism for thanks); but he insisted he wanted new shifters and that we were doing him a favour!

Mambo working on Lizzie's bike

Lizzie's dashboard, replete with 90s thumb shifter

Whilst all this was going on, they noticed that Lizzie's rear mud flap was attached with string; this had been the case since losing a part on Day 2 and has no affect whatsoever on performance, but soon some metal tubing was being sawed, bent, drilled and fitted, fixing it better than it had been when we first installed it.

As the bike was entirely stripped down and utterly immobilised, we stood by a little nervous that the alarm would go and they’d have to rush off leaving us with an entirely unusable bike.  But they worked away for the entire afternoon, and everything was being put back together by the time they had to suit up and shoot off to fight a fire (or rescue a cat).

We honestly cannot put into words quite how wonderful this experience was.  We had turned up worried that Lizzie's bike was not going to allow us to complete our journey and Ali's elbow could get infected and cause problems. We left with a wonderfully functioning bike, a clean and well bandaged elbow and a wonderful warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

Mural from Panamanian Bomberos