A couple of days ago in Umbria, Italy, i got stranded with a friend of mine in a small village after mountain biking all day in the mountains. It was getting dark, we had no more water and food and we were exhausted.

Unable to get back to the car, we decided to take a straight line down, and reached this small village at the bottom of the mountain with our car 30+ km away.

At that point it was pitch black, and also my friend had fallen and injured himself badly and unable to continue. Found out later he had a broken femur. We went to a small cafe where a bunch of locals where playing cards and watching Euros on tv.

We asked if we could get a taxi, but we had no luck getting one after calling a couple of companies. So we offered the same amount of money to anybody that could drive us at least to the next village, 10 km away, where we had booked our B&B.

This way we could have spent the night there and recover the car later.

After 30 minutes of being there, with people still debating on what to do, who was going to do what, with whose car, and so on, a guy that had been quite the whole time, said forget about it, the money and everything else, I will take you.

He didn't just took us to the next village. He took me on a 30-minute drive up the mountain with his beaten up car to recover my car so that we would have fresh clothes to change into and load up our bikes and be ready for the next day.

I asked his name and why he had just stepped in.

"My name is Muio (right spelling?) " he said,

"I am an immigrant shepherd from the Balkan region of Macedonia. I have done all the possible jobs, even built roads in the heat of the Libyan desert for 3 years.

Now I do what I love, which is to herd sheep.

I helped you because I know what it is to be in difficult times, I have been there myself."

Before leaving I asked him how much does a sheep cost.

I gave him money to buy 3.

One for the each of us, I guess.