Friday, January 23, 2009

The light at the end of the tunnel

Since Tuesday I have been a little busy. But there is a bit of a light at the end of the tunnel. It does appear that we can in fact claim for the island government for the damage caused by the rock but in order to do this we had to jump through a number of hoops the first was to register a complaint with the local police in Barlovento, so on Wednesday morning that is what me a Sheila did. At the same time we popped home to feed Tabby who was a bit hungry having not had her supper the night before or breakfast that morning and along the way we stopped to get some more photos from the scene.
The rock and my hand for comparison

The location.

And having got the details yesterday of the person who told us that if we took photos that we could claim. Today we went off to the Island government to put in our claim. Now if any of you have seen The Incredibles then you will know what I am about to talk about. There is a scene in which the superhero tells the old lady exactly which forms she needs to fill in and who to see in order to get her claim paid. We had a similar situication today and as it happened the lady at our insurance company gave us the piece of paper which listed exactly what documents we needed so when we went to talk to the Cabildo we had exactly what we needed and our claim was done very quickly (Thanks to sheila for the tanslations, I still can't get my head round past tenses in spanish). Now all we have to do is wait and see how much the car is going to cost and when the insurance assesor is going to look at it so they can start work.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Gona Live on Solid Rock

Well the first post of 2008 and it's bad news I'm afraid. Last night as we were driving home after teaching we had just got to the other side of Barlovento and were driving down one of the many ravines that cross the north of the island when I noticed out of the corner of my eye some movement on the side of the road, with horror I realised that it was a rock of a significant size. I did what I could but as the rock hit the road only about a meter in front there was not a lot I could do and I hit the rock square on the front of the car at about 30 - 40Km/h.

We pushed the rock about 2 - 3 Meters further down the road. When we got out to inspect the damage we discovered the rock firmly wedged under the front of the car. I rock was in fact about the size of 2 footballs. As we rolled the rock out from under the car and to the side of the road I saw the horrible sight of water running down the road which could only mean one thing the radiator was toast.

Luckily just then a land rover came past and stopped to help as the car wasn't going to go anywhere under it's own power the guy offered to tow us to somewhere safe where we could wait for a truck to come and pick us up. Just as we were sorting out the tow rope another car stopped and said that if we take some photos we could claim from the island government the cost of the repair. So we took some photos. We then phoned our friend Sheila to ask her to call the insurance company and ask for a tow. About an hour later the tow truck arrived and the stricken bertha was loaded on board and we and the car were taken to Santa Cruz where Sheila picked us up. We finally got to bed at about 1am.