After a shower and a short nap, we headed back to the airport to see what we could do about getting our bikes and to see what we could find out about John. A visit to Air Canada Cargo proved that we could do nothing there because John was listed on the waybill as the consignee. The next stop was Air Mexico to find out if he had caught his flight from Mexico City to Lima. He never boarded the plane. Now we were very concerned. Did he leave Mazatlan at all? Of course he must have or we would’ve been contacted by him or one of his pals down there.
A few emails to common contacts proved that nobody had heard anything from him since the Thursday night before he was to have flown out, when he called a number of people.
Finally late Tuesday evening we received the bad news by email. Our dear friend John had passed away in the Mexico City airport. That is all anyone knew at that time. Needless to say, this was a devastating end to our first day in South America. How could this be true? John was healthy as a horse, fun-loving, always smiling, full of energy and never let anything disturb him for long. This trip that we’d been planning for the past 2 years was really John’s idea. How could it be that he will not be able to fulfill his dream?
What will we do now? We may never have planned to do this trip by ourselves. John was the one who could communicate in Spanish, he was the one who had experience dealing with Mexican and Central American authorities, he was a vital part of this adventure. The only thing that could be done at this point was to try and get a good nights sleep.
