We had agreed on an amount, and he owed me 130 pesos in change for my 200 peso note. Judging me an even dumber gringo than I was, he handed me a fifty peso note, and offered no more. When I put my hand out for the rest, he had grudgingly peeled another fifty off the giant wad in his pocket. I had to stick my hand out twice more before he finally coughed up all my change, then he tried to get it back by peddling a handful of local petrified shark teeth from another pocket. He had not been pleased when I told him he could keep his shark teeth, and I would keep my change.
Federales stroll and snack in waterfront park.
We pulled into the Pemex at El Centenario, but it was overgrown with desert weeds, its pumps askew, windows boarded or broken, and indeed it was abandoned. Rather than backtrack into La Paz for gas, we decided to deal with El Cien's portly peddler of petrol and petrified shark teeth, when we got there. We rolled back onto the highway in the high heat of the afternoon. Then a red flash from the dashboard caught my eye. Then it was blinking red, and then the oil light blinked on and stayed on, and there was no denying it, our chronic oil leak had blown itself open and we were dead in the water, becalmed in the desert ten miles past La Paz.