How to Set Your Rental Car on Fire – The Conclusion

Torching a car is easier than you think – especially when you don’t even try.

How to Set Your Rental Car on Fire – The Prologue

We had driven nearly six and a half kilometers since the first sign told us that El Rinconcito was just two kilometers ahead. My once peppy, shiny blue Nissan Versa was now filthy and exhausted. When I finally parked and we exited the car, I could have sworn that I heard it groan. “That poor thing. It may never allow us leave this place,” I thought. But never mind that. It was a beautiful afternoon and it was time to catch our fish – and to eat them like the savages that we are!

Felipe, Nina, and I approached a small wooden hut in front of the pond. Felipe said some Spanish words to the teenager working inside and then we each grabbed our fishing contraptions, which were comprised of a stick, a fishing line, and a small hook attached to it. We had everything we needed to snag our lunch after the teen laborer even baited the hooks for us. Sara didn’t want to participate in the wholesale slaughter of the gods’ gentle creatures, so she found a perfect location for spectating on a nearby bench.

Being the expert fisherman that I am – perfecting my craft on the inshore waters of Florida’s eastern coastline – I was first to reel one in. Felipe and Nina try to follow suit, giggling at each of their repeated failures, but in due course, they brought in a nice haul. We had four good-looking trout and we were ready to feast. We handed our trucha over to the teen tico and he mercilessly gutted and washed them. They were now primed for the frier, which is the apparent cooking method of choice in most of these mountain towns.

We walked down the dirt driveway to the restaurant and waited for our lunch to be served. We chose a table outside in the fresh mountain air, underneath a tree and adjacent to a cluster of blackberry bushes. The temperature was in the low to mid-70s with a slight breeze and some rolling clouds. Nearby, there was a row of vibrant reddish flowers that strangely seemed out of place with the various shades of green, brown, and blue that surrounded us. Nevertheless, it added a splash of contrast and we really could not have asked for a better setting for our Sunday outing.

Rafael arrived just as lunch was being served and we talked, ate, and had a very pleasant time. About an hour or so later, we decided to head back to San Marcos. Felipe and I needed to drive back to San José that evening because he unfortunately had to work in the morning and I had completed all of my business-related tasks. Rafael and Sara departed first in Rafael’s Suzuki Sidekick, and we were to follow shortly behind.

As I approached the haggardly beast that was once my delicate blue belle of a car, I decided to take one last photo of the trucha pond. I raised my phone and centered my shot, then heard Felipe calling to me.

“David!”

“Yeah? Hang on a second. Let me take this picture,” I told him.

“No – David,” he shouted. “David, look!”

“What?” I was slightly annoyed, but I knew he wasn’t really an excitable guy, so I glanced over to see what the problem was. I saw him pointing at the passenger-side windows.

I returned to centering the landscape and said to myself, “What the hell is he pointing at?” I didn’t see anything other than the car, with its tinted windows, muddy tires, and a thin coating of dirt from the drive there. I thought that perhaps there was an insect on the car that he really wanted me to see – maybe something that was unique to the area. Or maybe he really needed to get something out of the car but was using the wrong word to get my attention. “Oh, those silly Costa Ricans,” I snickered to myself. I still wasn’t sure what he wanted, but I took my picture and began making my way over to him.

Wait a minute…

“Tinted windows,” I thought. “The windows on this car weren’t tinted. Or were they? No – no they certainly were not,” I distinctly remembered.

I could see Felipe becoming more agitated and reaching for the door handle, so I pulled the key fob out of my pocket and unlocked the car. He hurriedly opened the back, passenger-side door and thick black smoke began pouring out.

Then it hit me. In my mind I thought, “Oh, shit! I literally burned up the engine!” My main fear for the car during our drive to this mini paradise must have predictably occurred. I didn’t actually see a fire inside, so I couldn’t tell where it had originated but I was certain that I had just committed de facto arson on my Versa. Then I realized that I wasn’t seeing any smoke coming from under the hood, so it couldn’t have been the engine, right?

With the visions from the movie Backdraft seared into my mind from when I was a child, I carefully opened the driver’s door. I stepped back and watched as more smoke bellowed out. I still saw no fire, so I opened the rest of the doors and the trunk. I pulled out my suitcase and other bags and moved them over to the trout hut. The smoke was coming from everywhere, but there wasn’t a visible fire anywhere.

After a couple of minutes of searching for the cause, the car had finally aired out and we found the culprit. It was a little shocking to see and I immediately thought back to the days when I was a child and my brothers and I would leave watches or other primitive hand-held electronics in our parents’ cars during the summer. The insides would be rendered useless from the extreme heat of the car, combined with the items often being left in direct sunlight. And wouldn’t you know it – the same thing happens today with cell phones. Nina’s cell phone, to be exact.

Yes – just as she did on our previous trip that week, she left her phone in the back seat of the car while we fished, ate, and talked for nearly two hours that afternoon. While that was going on, the battery inside of her phone was melting and leaking out onto the vinyl seats where she had left it, causing the seat to burn and melting nearly half of the interior of the car along with it. Even the visor above the driver’s seat was partially melted and a stalactite of plastic extended down past the steering wheel. Soot covered everything, including my suitcase and bags in the trunk.

It was a disaster.

We were supposed to be leaving for San José in an hour. The car rental facility was two and a half hours away and it was already 3:00 pm on a Sunday afternoon. The windows were blackened. I didn’t know if the car was even drivable. I wasn’t sure if my clothes would smell like smoke for the next two days and if I would end up being stopped and strip-searched by airport security because of it. Nina was crying. Felipe was consoling her. The teenaged guy from the trucha pond was watching and calling out to whom I assumed was his mother, the restaurant owner. She wandered over with an older woman who may have been her mother and they both stood pointing and poking around the car. Rafael and Sara had even returned to help out – and Rafael was spraying his mini fire extinguisher into the back seat. I was trying to call the rental agency to explain the situation, but there was a bit of a language barrier because I didn’t know how to describe to them that a cell phone had just melted half of their vehicle and that I didn’t know the full extent of the damage done.

If only I had a camera crew on this trip. This could have been YouTube gold!

After ten minutes or so, everything slightly calmed down. Rafael spoke with the rental company and explained everything. Of course, they couldn’t come out that afternoon and get the car because they claimed that they didn’t have enough staff to do so. I was told to drive it back to San José and they would gladly swap it out. So, we were on our own until then. We wiped down the interior with wet paper towels until it was somewhat safe to sit in and see out of without being covered with or blinded by ash. I tossed my suitcase and backpack in the trunk again. I tried starting the car and it fired right up – it was a good sign at least, as we were not entirely stranded. Felipe, Nina, and I got in and began making our way back to San Marcos to Rafael’s house – down the dirt and gravel roads, windows wide open, half holding our breath for the duration of the trip so as not to soak in all of the pleasant, burnt vinyl odors.

Nina was in the back seat and cried the entire ride home. Not only did she lose her phone, but she felt bad about me and the car. She thought that I would have to pay for all of the damages, but I ignorantly told her, “It’s alright. That’s why we buy insurance!” It wasn’t much consolation at the time, but I think she eventually understood that I wouldn’t be completely screwed. And I think I may have actually believed that, too.

Felipe and I ultimately made it to San José around 7:30 that evening and I dropped off my crusty carriage at the rental agency. It seemed like the entire staff had emerged from their offices and garage – about seven people in total (I knew they were lying to me) – to poke their heads inside the car and snap photos on their cell phones. They were incredulous about the story we told until they saw the phone case that was partially melted to the seat and I showed them the pictures of the smoking mess. I signed a few papers and they brought around a new vehicle for me to drive for my remaining day.

Which car would I receive this time? Oh, joy: a shiny, electric blue Nissan Versa.

I threw my suitcase and backpack in the trunk once again, Felipe and I got in, I cranked up the air conditioning, turned on the fancy AM/FM radio, and spun those little wheels right out of that parking lot. I dropped him off at his apartment on the other side of the city and made my way back to my hotel. On the return drive, I was at least able to see a street performer while stopped at a red light, so the evening wasn’t a total loss.

Drained from all of the day’s excitement, I finally stumbled into the hotel around 9:00 that night to claim my room. After a few problems with my credit card – because the front desk agent decided to run two successive transactions, each for $250 holding fees, which then flagged my account for fraud – I was finally able to relax in a real hotel room for the first time that week. I had reliable Wi-Fi, cable television (in English), air conditioning, a soft mattress, pillows, and comforter, and even some good lighting to boot.

I had grown somewhat of an appetite by this time, since we didn’t have a chance to eat any dinner that evening, so I decided to grab my bag of Yucca chips that I bought from a local shop in San Marcos and had been wanting to eat for the past several days. I grabbed my backpack and opened it up…no chips. Then I remembered – they were in a plastic bag with my cáscara (the outer husk of the coffee cherry that is used for making a tea-like drink). So, where was this plastic bag?

On the bench next to the trucha pond at El Rinconcito. I had left it behind during the chaos and just now remembered that I took it out of the trunk and put it there.

“Son of a bitch,” I thought. I may have even vocalized that. What a disappointment. Of all the things that I could have lost in the car fire, I lose the two items that I really wanted to try and the fire wasn’t even the cause of the loss. They were simply forgotten. Well, that’s not entirely true. They were gone, but I’ll never forget them. How could I? They’ll be forever associated in my memory with that time my rental car was set ablaze by a cell phone battery.

And I’ll also remember those Yucca chips and that cáscara whenever I think about that time I was charged an additional $1000 from the rental company for the insurance deductible on my torched car.

I eventually made it home two nights later with plenty of stories to tell – this story being just one of them. Overall, I learned some valuable lessons on this trip but I paid a pretty penny for them. If you take anything away from this saga of slight sadness, let it be these guidelines for life:

• Be good to your producers and providers if you’re a businessman who depends on their goods. Without them, you can’t accomplish your own goals.

• Don’t believe any hand-painted signs that tell you the distance to your destination while in the Costa Rican mountains. And be at least somewhat skeptical about the professionally-made ones.

• Even if the weather is nice and it’s a partly cloudy day, never leave your cell phone in your car – especially if there’s a battery in it.

• Always buy the insurance for rental vehicles when traveling to foreign countries, but expect to pay whatever the deductible is, in full, if any accidents actually happen.

• Enjoy all of life’s moments – in the moment – but document your experiences whenever you can so that you’ll be able to share your best, or worst, adventures with others. This will also give you the opportunity to look back and reminisce, laugh, and possibly make a few dollars from it.

• Always eat your snacks immediately after buying them, or else some teenager at a trucha pond in the Costa Rican mountains will enjoy them instead.

Costa Rica is a beautiful place. If you've never been there, I encourage you to go - and not just to the beach resorts. The mountains are just as nice and the people are quite friendly. If you're lucky, maybe you'll see me there torching cars, wrangling fish, or even sliding SUVs sideways down mountainsides in the rain...but we'll save that story for another time.

---

The revenue that I generate through my content on Steemit will be used as described in my post, Enriching Lives Through the Power of Steemit. Please feel free to contribute to my cause in any way that you can. We can achieve greatness through voluntary interaction!