We all decided that a trip to the beach would be nice, especially since the majority of us had just arrived from significantly colder climates. This particular "we" included Krysta, Leah and myself, the Janzen family and Dustin. The Janzens took their car and Dustin rode with them, while Krysta, Leah and I took our car and followed behind them. We'd stopped once because the Janzen's dog, Bosco, had gotten a little car sick and a little cleaning needed to take place. We were soon back on our way, beach-bound and pretty stinkin' stoked about it! We were driving through a mountainous area on pretty curvy roads, with steep drop-offs and one lane bridges around just about every bend. Alright....now, about 10 minutes after we'd stopped for Bosco, Krysta was driving and we were behind the Janzens on a down hill slope. We were needing to slow down, so naturally, Krysta went to step on the brakes, but nothing happened. She let up and tried again. Still no braking or slowing type of response. Right about then, some kinds of panic/survival mode set in. Now, I can't be sure if I can recollect the following events with the exact details, or even with some kind of semi-accurate time frame, but here's how I remember it. The Janzens were ahead of us and we weren't able to stop. There were cars in the other lane coming from the other direction, so that wasn't an option. Krysta's driving at this point, I'm convinced, was inspired and we were for sure being protected. With no other option, we braced ourselves and rear-ended the Janzens. They told us afterwards that because of the speed that we were both going, they didn't really feel us hit them too bad. After we hit them and the cars in the other lane had passed, Krysta maneuvered us over to the left lane and over to where there happen to be a little shoulder on the side of the road. Krysta had pulled the emergency brake at some point earlier, but maybe not quite hard enough because it wasn't pulled up at this time. We had slowed down quite a bit by this time, so we pulled the emergency brake one more time, while riding the shoulder. Then , we hit a kind of cement drainage pipe, with a little ditch on either side of it. This finally brought us to a stop. We were tilted with the driver side up and teetered for a little bit, but nothing else happened. Jeremy had pulled their car over up ahead of us and he and Dustin got out and ran over to our car. They made sure we were all okay and helped us exit the perched vehicle. Within minutes a policeman appeared on the scene. And then a newspaperman came for pictures and interviews- of which he was disappointed to learn that we were all friends and not going to have a rumble or something. Then an ambulance came and we assured them that we were all fine. The place where we ended up was quite the perfect setting for rubberneckers, as we were right near one of the single lane bridges so cars often had to stop and yield to the other lane, giving them plenty of time to stare at us, point and take pictures with their cell phones. In Costa Rica, after an accident, you're not allowed to move the vehicles until the insurance person comes and takes pictures and checks it all out. So, the insurance person showed up after a couple hours and we put the call in for a tow truck to get the car back home. The accident occurred around 9:30am and the tow truck didn't come till about 1:30pm. At one point it started to rain pretty hard, so Jeremy and Dustin used a tarp (that was meant for shade at the beach) and made a shelter using the Janzen's car and a fence, so that we could avoid the rain. We were also all getting pretty hungry, so Jeremy whipped out their little bbq and grilled up the hot dogs that were meant for our lunch. So, we had a little camp set up, complete with a bbq lunch and everything- it was pretty amazing! Finally, the tow truck showed up and brought our smashed little car all the way back home. whew! I had to take quite a few deep breaths while writing/ remembering all that had happened. But we are all safe and fine!
It's pretty amazing, though, as we've remembered these events and thought about how pretty perfectly it all happened, well, after the failure of the brakes. If we hadn't stopped for Bosco, who knows how that would have changed the location of where the brakes went out. Or the fact that our car almost went ahead to get gas, but didn't. If we had, the Janzens and Dustin wouldn't have been there to stop us with their car and keep us from driving off some edge. That's another thing- the place where our brakes failed was kinda perfect also. There were no crazy curves that we had to attempt and the shoulder was in the perfect place- we probably would have gone off the single lane bridge if that space hadn't been there. And the fact that there were no cars in the other lane coming at us when we needed to get over there. Also the big cement drainage cylinder and the ditch around it was perfect for stopping us. Really.....the fact that all those things so perfectly lined up for us to walk away, unharmed, from a brakeless runaway car on a much travelled, curvy, mountain highway can be no coincidence. God definitely spared us from an event that could have been really tragic and we are incredibly grateful.
Below are some pictures that were taken, post-accident, while we waited on the side of the road.
This is just minutes after the accident occurred- you can see our car over on the right, the ambulance and the reporter's car behind it.
You can kind of see in this picture how the car was sort of teetering.
Our car actually didn't get smashed up too badly- it could have been a lot worse.
The Janzens' car didn't get too badly damaged either.
This happened for pretty much 4 hours straight- I'm sure we provided many cars with a topic for conversation.
Our little make-shift, out of the rain, bbq-ing camp site. pretty amazing!
One last shot- you can kinda see where the front passenger side wheel is in the drainage cylinder ditch thing.
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