This is the story you have been waiting for! It’s long, so I have illustrated it with many pictures from the adventure!
Kyla, Janina and I rented a car and went to Northern Ireland. We had friends of friends who lived up there and were willing to let us stay with them for free! We were pumped! The immensity of the freedom of having our own car was all around us, it was intoxicating.
After having the car for four days and having a chance to mix a little exploration and business, we were finally to the day that had us traveling the long way back down to Dublin. The plan was to take the Causeway down (the scenic route) and make it to Dublin sometime after dark. We would then stay with Team Reckless before heading to the airport the next day to drop off the car and fly to Budapest, Hungary.
Everything was going as planned, we slept in, finished packing and then drove into town to say bye to Ros. The clouds were looming overhead, but we just asked Jesus to move the clouds along so that we could see the extraordinary sights. We stopped along the side of the road several times, just to play around and take pictures.
We were having a blast! We ended up stopping at Giant’s Causeway and were going to walk as far as we could in the few short hours that we had. It was beautiful, but not long after starting our long trek it started raining! Not just a mild drizzle, it was beginning to pour! So we followed the example of the sheep in the field next to us and we sought shelter.
The rain looked like it was going to stick around for a while, so we decided to get back on the road and try to find a less rainy adventure
…if we only knew what was coming!
Even though Ireland gets rain almost every day, there are still parts on the road where there is no drain off for water. That means after having a down pour like we had just experienced, there were several places in the road that were flooded.
We weren’t worried. We passed through many places where the water had covered the road. We came to a point where we could see a car turning around on the top of a hill. We decided to go and see why they turned around. At the top of the hill all we could see was a little water on the sides of the road, but we could still see the middle of the road. We all decided that we could definitely make it.
What we hadn’t realized was that there was a huge puddle/lake looming just around the bend in the road. About halfway through the puddle/lake we realized that this was a BAD idea! The car stalled and we were stuck! Opening the doors was not an option as water had already started to seep into the car. Kyla threw the car into neutral so we could roll down the windows and Janina and I crawled out. The water was up to our knees, but since we are super strong, we started pushing the car.
Kyla had honked the horn and one of the neighbors had come out to help us. Between the four of us we were able to get the car out of the puddle and to a parking spot. The guy, George, has a son who has mechanical skills, so he called him out.
As we bailed the water out of the car, Craig came out and looked at the engine. Because of water getting into the air filter we were not able to start the car again. He was worried that water had gotten into the engine and mixed with the oil, which we knew was not going to dry in the few hours that we had.
George and Craig ended up being our Knights in Shining Armor! They invited us into their home, let us change, gave us tea and dessert! Then they got online and found out that we could catch a train from Coleraine to Belfast, then jump on a bus from Belfast to the Dublin airport.
To catch the next rain we had to hurry because it was leaving in 20 minutes. So we quickly gathered all of our stuff and jammed it into Craig’s tiny car and off we went. Half way to the train station we encountered another puddle. Craig’s car was already lower to the ground because of all the weight from us and our packs, so we encouraged him to find another way around.
He then jumped out of the car and waded through the water to find out how deep it was. He was satisfied that we would make it, so we slowly crept through the water. The small delay along with the time it took us to get our stuff together made us late for the train. We had an hour to kill before the next train left, so we found a place to eat dinner.
We had Fish and Chips one last time before leaving Ireland. It was really good! Craig was completely embarrassed by the fact that we wanted to buy his dinner for helping us out so much, he was truly a gentleman. It was crazy how God used that ordeal so that we could talk to him. He is getting ready to go around the world for a year! He’ll be coming through the States at some point, so we told him to drop by:)
We eventually got on the train and made it to Belfast by 8:55pm. We hurried through the station and found the bus to Dublin. We didn’t have any Pounds left, so we asked the bus driver if he would take Euro. He said he only took Euro, and we got on the bus. The bus left at 9pm, we were literally moving as we found our seat and sat down! We would have had to wait another hour, which doesn’t seem too long, but we were exhausted and we were told it would be another 3-3.5 hours to Dublin.
We were planning on going to the Dublin airport and spending the night there since that’s where the bus was going. But we found out that the bus was actually going to one more stop after the airport and it was exactly where we needed to go! The place the bus stopped was only a couple blocks away from where Reckless was staying!
We were able to shower, use the internet and get a good nights sleep in before having to travel for another two days straight! God’s provision shined through in many ways that day!
You can tell a lot about a persons character in a situation like this. What is revealed to me was that all three of us girls are really chill! We were laughing the entire time, because what else are you going to do? No one panicked, yelled, or got angry. What could have been a very stressful situation ended up all working out very smoothly! Praise God for the many ways He saved us and brought all the details together!
