How We Swamped Our Car in the River

Here's a picture for you:   The four of us sitting in puddly, smelly seats in our soggy car,  pulled by the slowest tractor on earth, our car alarm blaring the whole way to the Samara mechanic's.  (Until the guy in the tractor finally lost patience with us, stopped his tractor, and furiously disconnected the battery....)

We certainly had an eventful weekend in Guanacaste.

1. Benji was stung by a large jellyfish.
2. Marina almost stepped on a scorpion.
3. A tractor had to pull our car out of the river.

Here's how our car-in-the-river fiasco happened:

We were trying to catch the sunset, so we decided to take the shortcut back to beautiful Playa Carillo from our day excursion in Guanacaste.

Okay, and somewhere along the road, we had made a wrong turn.
The first road we turned down was blocked by a giant felled tree.   So we took the other road to Samara (only 7 kilometers away!) and thought, "Wow!  We don't remember coming this way, but it must be a shortcut."

We came upon a river crossing.   Earlier that day, we had already crossed a couple of small creeks, but this river was muuuuchhh wider and deeper.  We saw a car coming from the other direction, driving across the swollen river, with the driver and passengers whoooing like they just won the lottery.   How hard could it be?

A couple of local ladies were bathing in the river.  "Sure.  Everyone crosses here," they said.  "Just drive in a curve to stay in the shallows."

We really did want to catch that sunset, so we decided to go for it.   Our curvature was a smidgeon too wide, and we could hear the wheels spinning, throwing rocks into the under carriage  and digging the wheels into the loose river rocks.

From the back, I heard Benji calmly saying, "Mom...  Dad...  There's water coming in back here.  My feet are wet.  No, wait.  My legs are wet, now.."

It was coming in fast.

"Get the windows down!"   I snapped into action.  I've had this phobia of the worst case car-in-water scenario so many times that my instincts were ready.  I jumped out the window into the thigh-deep water.

"Get the electronics," Steve yelled.   "Hand them out the window to Mom! Tablets, phones and cameras were thrown into my backpack in haste.

"Climb out the windows, NOW!" I yelled to the kids.    We were all in the water by then, save Steve. The car was flooded over the seats.   Despair and astonishment set in.

The bathing women stared wide eyed.  Steve put it into neutral.  We all pushed.  Nothing.

Then the engine died.

We sat on the riverbank, despondent, the howls of a monkey in the trees.  The ladies called their friend who had a tractor.   An hour later or so, the tractor man arrived and yanked us jerkily out of the river, where water flowed out of the car doors like mini waterfalls.

The car would not start.   Senor Tractor Driver drove us to town, at about 3 miles an hour, and took us to a mechanic.

Miraculously, by morning the car had dried out (with the expensive help of a Samara mechanic), and started up again.  We drove home, exhausted from the highs and lows of our Thanksgiving adventure.

Epilogue:   Our car is being professionally dried out as we speak.  They have removed the seats, the carpeting, the console, and they assure us all will be well.

Moral of the story:  Well, there are several.

1. Slow down.  We don't have to see every turtle or every sunset.  It's vacation after all.
2. Don't do dumb things.   Next time, we won't cross a river, even if all the other kids are doing it.  This could have been a lot worse than it was...
3. If you notice a scorpion under your daughter's chair at dinner, tell her to get her feet up quickly, and kindly ask the cook to kill it.