During our stay in Granada I arranged an appointment with the BMW garage in Guatemala to look at the clutch.

There’s very few garages in this part of the world who can fix large motorbikes – they don’t have the training and they certainly don’t have the parts. They’re used to riding and repairing small bikes with generic, swappable parts.

Our most likely success would be in Guatemala City and that was another 450 miles along the main highway.

We were awake early at 4am on the day of our departure from Granada. In this biodiverse hotel we had two cockerels living outside our room. Oh, these guys could cock a doodle doo like it was a cock a doodle doo world championship!

After a breakfast of eggs, rice and beans, we headed for Leon, a nice easy 83 miles along the main highway. Or so we thought.

I was treating the bike nice and the bike was being nice to us. That’s how relationships work. Don’t they?

‘Not always!’ I hear you shout back! Yeah, I agree and in this relationship no matter how well I treated the bike it had made its mind up it was going to have a bit of a huff. That’s how relationships work. Don’t they?

We were rolling along nicely when we hit the outer main roads of Managua, capital city of Nicaragua. It was traffic bedlam.

We’re used to traffic chaos in this part of the world. Hell, we even survived La Paz. But this time it’s a little bit special. After each stop I have to massage the clutch to get the bike moving. My hands were tender and skilfull. Honestly, I was like master baker Paul Holywood making the softest, fluffiest white bread in the world.

We kept moving. Slowly through the traffic. The clutch and I began to overheat. I breathed slowly, the sweat dripped and I massaged.

We reached a large roundabout and the road ahead looked relatively clear. A wide roadway leading over a bit of an incline. Looked like heaven. I smiled. We had made it. I had massaged that clutch through traffic hell. I was the clutch massager. What a guy I am!

I sighed in relief as we negotiated the roundabout and headed up the hill. Take it nice and easy. Nice and easy does it, master massager.

Then the bike slowed. It revved. It wouldn’t pull up the hill.

I massaged, I shifted down to first gear but the bike continued to slow.

It had had enough.

It stopped.

The clutch massager stopped.

Stopped in the inside lane on a fast road, I checked the mirrors for vehicles racing up behind.

‘It’s finished’ I said to Susan.

‘Get off, it’s clear’.

Susan jumped off.

‘This bike is going nowhere!’

Nightmare in Nicaragua had begun.

• Adventure motorcycle
• BMW 1250 GSA
• Central America
• Nicaragua