Doh!

When Mario had the van towed, he took it to a repair shop and had all the little things fixed (the loose bumper, the peeling strip on the passengers side that stopped the door from fully opening, the bearings, the rear axle, etc.)  He brought it back a few days later all nice and new.  It had seriously been about 3 days when this happened:

 We were headed to a vacation within a vacation to Finca Manglar - a remote farm in the middle of the woods where no one but National Geographic photographers go because it is so beautiful - and had a little mishap driving off the ferry.  The ferry was just a flat boat with two tracks for wheels that could be lowered with a chain.  A little boat hooked onto the side of the ferry drove it to the other side, where the ground was so muddy that two wooden boards were placed from the metal planks to the firmer ground.  The trouble was that Adam couldn't see from the drivers seat where exactly the boards were placed.  He relied on the guy who seemed to be guiding him off the ferry, but apparently he wasn't, because the van slipped immediately off the plank and into the mud, and in the process ripped our newly fixed bumper.  Doh!  Adam rolled up the sleeves of his white church shirt (we drove straight from church), and everyone tried to push him out, but to no avail.  The ferry turned around, drove across the river, picked up a 4WD vehicle, and drove it back to pull us out.  It's always an adventure!

I love that the kids are used to things not going the way we planned.  They just got out of the van and started playing on the river bank. Brigham did pretty good at balancing these rocks!