Car Problems Near Manuel Antonio
Tuesday, December 12th, 2006My parents are arriving from Seattle today and after out fiasco to Tortuguero we still had a few days to kill. Matthias had found a place that had a huge pool with water slides, was near the beach and we were able to camp. We headed out there because it sounded like a great place for the kids and we thought it would be nice to camp again.
It took us a couple of hours to get out there and it was really perfect for us all. Both kids are so happy in the water and William loved the water slides. We’ve gone swimming quite a lot on our trip and William can almost swim all by himself. He’s so comfortable in the water and loves it. Camping worked pretty well, too. It was still a little humid, and there were a lot of bugs at night. We just kept the doors on the van shut and kept the bugs out.
The next day we went swimming in the morning and then decided to do a little spring cleaning in the car. We had room to spread out and were able to empty and re-organized a lot of the cupboards. We swept the floors, cleaned the windows, the dash and took everything off the roof. We’ve been carrying around a gas canister around with us since we left Seattle and it has been kind of a pain. We always have to worry about someone stealing it, releasing hot air since it often sits in the direct sun and expands. It’s still full of gas, so back up onto the roof it went.
About 45 minutes away was Manuel Antonio, the most-visited national park in Costa Rica. The description in our guide book sounded really good, so we decided to head out there and check it out. The road from the camping spot out to the main highway is a dirt road and some sections were pretty rough. We heard two strange noises that sounded like something breaking, but we didn’t see anything obviously wrong so we continued. About 15 minutes into the drive Matthias shuts off the radio and says “There something wrong with the car.” It was sputtering, he pulled over to the side of the road and the car died. My first thought was that it was out of gas, but the gas gauge was not showing totally empty. First we opened up the engine cover and started checking hoses. Everything looked connected so we got the gas canister down and Matthias emptied about 3 liters of gas into the gas tank. That didn’t help. We thought maybe it was the gas pump since it just seemed like the engine wasn’t getting any gas and we knew there was some in there. It was about 90 degrees outside and ever hotter in the sun. We were surrounded by African palm plantations, but that doesn’t mean we ended up in a shady spot on the side of the road. There were also no stores in sight. We didn’t have any idea what was wrong, so Matthias decided to empty the rest of the gas into the gas tank. A nice man pulled over and asked us if we needed any help. Matthias tried one more time to start it and it worked. We had run out of gas after all.
With a new found appreciation for our gas canister we continued on to the next gas station. We found that was enough adventure for the day and decided to bag the trip out to Manuel Antonio. So who would have thought our gas gauge would stop working just like that? At the beginning of the trip Matthias measured our gas mileage with every full tank of gas. We know that we get about 16-17 miles per gallon and that we can drive about 250 miles with a full tank. But ever since Semuc Champey in Guatemala, the gas tank leaks and we can only fill it up part way. We did some quick calculations and now we are always going to get 37 liters, which would be 10 gallons. That is not enough to overflow the tank, and it should guarantee us at least 150 miles on the road. And we all agree that we won’t drive anywhere without our gas tank up on the roof.
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