What to do if your car starts on fire in Mexico

On Friday night, I met up with a few teacher friends down in the centrito for food and drinks. As I was driving home, jamming out to the radio, I started to smell a bad burning smell. At first, I ignored it, thinking it had to be coming from outside. As I kept driving down the street, the smell became unbearable, until I realized that it was definitely coming from my car.

When I reached down for my phone, I realized that I was out of air time and couldn't make out going calls. Not being a car person, especially while speaking in Spanish, I started to freak out a bit. I was definitely 15 minutes from my house and had no way of getting a hold of someone to come and help me out.

Quickly, I made a turn into the local 7-11 where I saw a taxi cab driver waiting for a client.

"Hola senor, como esta? Mi carro huele como fuego!!!" Hi sir, how are you, my car smells like fire!

The man looks down at my car, looks at me, and starts to laugh. He's probably thinking where the crap is the fire Hannah? At the time, its the only word I could think of in Spanish that was some what close to "I have a burning smell coming out of my car and I have no idea what the freaking heck to do."

He asks me to pop my hood and takes a look. At this point, smoke was filtering out the side of car. He opens up a few gauges, looks at my engine, and just says, ahhh, "yo se que necesitas....I know what you need....solomente agua en tu carro.....only water in your car." En serio senor, solomente agua???" I'm not much of a mechanic but with smoke streaming out my car, I figured I needed a little more help than water. He pointed to the gas station across the street and told me to head over there to talk to an attendant.

I hopped into my car, put it in neutral, and ran it across the street to the oxxo. The man asked me what I needed...ummm...well..."el hombre me dijo que necesito agua en mi carro por que mi carro huele como fuego....that man told me that I need water in my car because my car smells like fire." He laughs a little too (clearly my spanish wasn't translating like you'd normally say it)

Then, in a moment of glory, the man takes out a "special" liquid from his work station and starts to pour it into my car. After two bottles of this miracle liquid, he tells me my car is good to go. Having no idea what he put in there, I just smile at him, laugh, thank him for the "agua" and drive off.

I haven't had the smell since. :)