Miracle on the way to Fatima ….


On the way to Fatima Wednesday 10th April 2013

You may be sceptical of the title, but I’ll tell my story away and you can make a judgment. From Sagres we had a long days travelling ahead, to Fatima. The motorhome guidance for Fatima hardly encouraging but we had a potential parking place identified on the map. Late afternoon, with 120km still to go and the truck exploded – well not quite an IED, the exhaust had dropped and was hanging down acting as an unwelcome brake. I tied it up and drove a couple of km to a service station. Surprising how little noise it made without a silencer – could we make 1000km to the port? We stopped the night at the service station, not quite what we had planned and they helpfully directed us to a mechanic in Aguas de Mura just a kilometre further. There we met Chico Barros, who spoke not a word of English (exactly the amount of my Portuguese). Together we worked on the exhaust, I removed it and he measured it six times before making a new pipe. Job done? I thought so, but he continued to strengthen the join and even cleaned up the tail pipe. 11am and we were on our way – not much later than a lazy breakfast day.  
We continued on our way but revised our plans due to the delay and decided to miss out Fatima altogether and go straight to Coimbra.
I’ll admit that Chico Barras was marvellous but not quite a miracle, but then, as it turned out, we were not on our way to Fatima. So that’s a double negative and therefore counts as “a miracle on the way to Fatima”.

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