Angel in the Mountains

Chris Searle and her husband took a cruise several years ago.  One of the stops was San Juan, Puerto Rico. “Instead of spending $15 on a cab to take us to an old fort, we decided to ask an approaching city bus driver if he was going that way,” Chris says.  The bus pulled up, and the driver nodded at their question.  The two climbed up onto the bus, feeling proud of themselves.  Who said Americans couldn’t navigate around in other countries?  And they had saved over $14 of their travel budget too!

”We were enjoying the ride and the picturesque scenery when, about 45 minutes later, it began to dawn on us that we were in the mountains,” Chris says.  This certainly was not the way to the fort.  “Where are you going?” Chris asked the driver, the only one on the bus who spoke a little English.

He was finished with work and was going home, he told her. In Puerto Rico, bus drivers take their vehicles home with them!

“But…”  Chris was fighting back panic.  By now, the mountain roads were so narrow that the bus barely fit on the road. There were goats chained to posts, and rough huts housing the people there. Any approaching vehicle or animal had to back up as there was not room enough for the bus to pass.  “I was becoming more and more terrified as we traveled into this dense mountainous forest,” Chris says.  “By the time my husband and I were the only ones left on the bus, the driver pulled over and ordered us out.  He then drove off.”

Stunned, Chris and her husband looked around.  It was beginning to get dark, and they were on a barren street with nothing but boarded up buildings, at least sixty miles from San Juan. And they had to be back to their ship in two hours—or they would miss it. 

The couple saw two people in a storefront, approached and asked if there was a police department nearby.  The people just laughed, and shooed them out of the building.  “We decided to look for help,” Chris says, “so we walked the main street.  The entire town was deserted, and looked like a bad movie set. On the edge of town we did see a man in a building, sleeping with his feet up. We approached him and he spoke no English and had no desire to awaken enough to try to help us.”

By now, all Chris could think of to do was to pray.  Stories of abductions ran through her head, and she was in terror.  God, God…help us, she said, over and over again.

Suddenly a young man came around the corner.  “May I help you?” he called to them.  Were they hearing things?  No, the man did speak English.  Quickly they explained that they had been hijacked and dropped off in this village, and needed help.

The young man had been surprised to hear them speak English, he explained, because no one in this village could.  He had learned English when he went away to school, and now was a teacher in a school near San Juan.  He had been visiting his mother who lived in the town.  “In fact,” he pointed out, “I come here only one day a month, usually much earlier in the day.  Had I followed my usual schedule, I would have missed meeting you. Come along!”

Chris and her husband looked at each other in relief, for the man seemed quite genuine---and he had a car!  .“He took us half way back to port as he had to go the other direction, and then got us a ride across the bay on a ferry,” Chris says, “and we made it to our ship on time. He was truly an angel.”

Perhaps even more of an angel than she had first realized.  For later, when Chris returned home, she mentioned the episode to a neighbor who was raised in Puerto Rico, and the neighbor was shocked that nothing unfortunate had happened to them. “That area is extremely dangerous,” she said, “and I am surprised that even the teacher was there alone.”

Chris wondered too.  And she did want to thank him again.  But her efforts bore no fruit.  The school where she thought her rescuer worked did not know him.  Nor did anyone else she contacted.  But he came just when he was needed most.  And she’ll always be grateful for that. 

(C) 2005  Joan Wester Anderson   www.joanwanderson.com

Home :: About :: Books :: Newsletter :: Archives :: Upcoming Events :: Site Map :: Media :: New & Notable