Repetir?
I wish I would have had a bridge like this one to roll across in several flooded places today! Not today, just a random bridge between Arenal and San Jose.
So six years ago today this happened...
Pretend you are looking at a photo of a massive flood.
We had Hurricane Nate roll through Costa Rica, only the second time a hurricane has hit and it happened to hit just as we were trying to fly back to the States to visit our kids after 4 months living here. I cannot even began to tell you what all we went through, but I know I posted here once it was all over. Scary times involving sleeping on the floor of three different airports because we could not get a direct flight out and then having to split up at the Fort Lauderdale airport because we got word while we were waiting that Jim's mother was dying. She died before Jim could get there.
I know, I know, it's a long read but there were lots of moving parts. Good times. Heh, nope. I cannot even rehash the family stupidity happening at the same either.
But today we have flashes harking back to those days oddly enough before I even saw it was the anniversary. It started this morning, when we had to get our lovely blue car to the dealership for an oil change and check up too early. The problem being a bridge is now out somewhere between Belen and Huacas, making our trip an hour longer to Liberia.
Started retracing our steps after a three hour wait at the dealership and a frantic run through Costa Rica's answer to Costco - Price Smart a place that routinely carries Kirkland brand products. I usually do the drive home and I'm always in a lather to get out of there by dark. There's a stretch near the village of Guardia that has zero road markings or street lights that I swear I've damn near run off the road every time I drive at night there.
Got out around 3 pm and got on the road for that long nearly two hour drive back and the heavens opened. Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time. I saw the kinds of massive flooding that makes me nervous. Culverts and gullies overflowing and peoples yards flooding. Not quite the flooding as far as the eye could see of 6 years ago but definitely weird echos of that day! There were more than a few places with sweeping water rushing across the road that gave me pause.
The back road from Santa Cruz into Villarreal it was just sprinkling and there was no standing water. It had not rained a drop beyond those random sprinkles. When we got about a half mile from where the road from Tamarindo t-bones right into the main Santa Cruz-Huacas road in Villareal we could see that the traffic was just not moving. Started to really get nervous because the back road from there I could have turned onto I could see was also backed up. A random Tico man came up and started telling each car there was a very bad accident at the Tee and the road was shut going through Villarreal and to Tama. He kept wanting us to veer off to the left, which would have sent us to Tama. We still would have needed to go through Villarreal to get to our house.
Turned towards the crowded back road that leads to a river crossing, knowing that the crossing possibly was not passable from the pounding rain waters. Couldn't get anywhere near the back road, too narrow for two way traffic. A bunch of guys in a work van gestured for us to follow them, so taking my courage and foolishness in hand I decided to follow them deeper down the pitted rutted gravel roads, further into unknown rural roads.
We wound all around until we popped out very close to the river crossing. What's that old saying? Fools rush in where angels fear to tread? I did it! But my heart was in my stomach with a squadron of butterflies because it was one lane high gravel through the river and up to the main road and two lanes of traffic. I was driving of bare edge, feeling my tires gripping the gravel at the river crossing on the left, but feeling my tires on the right not gripping a damn thing! Somehow I made it back up on the main road at El Llanito and found my way home.
Jim says every day here is an adventure. Sometimes it's more a
Comments