Kristyna Mullen before her Costa Rica trip.

After hearing this story about my dear friend Kristyna’s near death experience, last week in Costa Rica, I had to share it with all of you. Kristyna, it does feel like a scene in a film, totally unbelievable. I honor your courage and wisdom and love you dearly. You inspire me.

Here goes: This story is posted here with permission from Linda Scarlett Mullen’s (Kristyna’s mom) myspace page.

** This story is rough, as I wrote it down fast, while looped up on pain meds, and never revised it **

My Costa Rica Story: Surviving a Car Crash

My dad and I were driving back to the hotel from the airport.

I was sleeping in the passenger seat, with my seat a little reclined, but my seatbelt on.

All of a sudden I woke with my dad saying “fuck!” and feeling us drive into the brush. At first I assumed the worst we would suffer was a flat tire, and that we would stop in the brush.

That is until we started rolling. The first two rolls were scary, but not that violent. I thought we would stop after each of the first two rolls. But we were rolling down a cliff, so the rolls got progressively more violent. Every time we rolled, we flew more in the air, and a more violent impact. It got so violent by the later rolls. It seemed as though we were in the air forever before we finally crashed violently to the ground again, each time more violent than the last, and each time launching us in the air for longer amounts of time.

Everything was a blur of lights and everything was crashing around us. The crashes were so loud, as were the trees breaking as we were crashing through and demolishing them on the way down the cliff.

Finally the car stopped moving. We were upside down, and my dad was panicking a little. I asked him if he was okay, and when he told me he was, I assumed the worst was over. We had stopped moving, and although the car was upside down and a little crushed, it was not so crushed that we could not find our way out. I felt my head, and it was wet. I realized it was not water, but blood from a cut on my head, which was making my head so wet. My dad was trying to get the car door open, but it was stuck. I did a quick scan around the car, and saw that the back window was broken out.

“We have to crawl out the window” I told my dad. He told me, no, the windows aren’t working, and I told him it didn’t matter, because the back window was broken. What was once a full size car window was now smaller and crushed out of shape, but it was still big enough for both of us to fit out of. I had had high heels on from dinner, and as they were of little help to me now, I left them off. I had bare feet, and I was getting all cut up from the broken glass.

I started crawling out the window, when I saw branches, and nothing else but darkness. Then the horror hit me, and the severity of the situation. It hit me that we still may die. We were stuck in a tree!

My mind went back to the movie “Jurassic Park” when the kids were stuck in the car in the tree. I realized I was now living that movie, minus the dinosaur.

I yelled to my dad to stay still, and that we were in a tree, and one wrong move could cause the car to tip out of the tree and make us fall to our death. I had a brief moment of panic, and cried to my dad “I don’t want to die!”

I then came to my senses, and I crawled out the window and tested out the branches. The first few broke, but there were two solid branches coming up from the trunk that would hold us both. I told my dad to follow me out the window and sit on the tree with me.

When we both got out, I realized we may be stuck. If the tree was big enough to hold up a car, it was most likely a very tall tree. One false move would send us falling to our deaths.

My dad started to try and find ground, and started grabbing at banana leaves. I knew that banana leaves would simply tear, and would not support the weight of a human. I begged him to stop, and to just stay put until the morning when we could see what was going on. He said he was dizzy and afraid of losing consciousness. He was also worried about the tree giving way.

I told him to cram himself in between the two thick branches, and that I was fine to just hold on. I was very alert, as adrenaline was rushing through my body. I then told him that trying to get out of the tree was more dangerous than staying put, because we had no idea how high we were, and even if we could somehow make it down the tree we were in, going underneath the car was simply too dangerous. Turns out I made the right call, because when the police later came to the hospital, they told us that the bluff the tree saved us from falling down was about 700 feet high.

He was still worried, and I told him that if we started to hear the tree cracking, then we would try to make it down before dawn, but that otherwise the best thing to do would be to sit still until we could see.

I saw lights coming from the road above, and yelled for help. It was obvious to both me and my dad that yelling was helpless. We had rolled over 150 feet down the cliff side, and no one would be able to hear us, even if they were driving by. We were in the middle of the rainforest, and if we were going to live, we were going to have to figure it out ourselves.

My night vision started to improve, and I saw that the car made a bridge from the tree we were sitting in to the bluff. I pushed on both sides of the car, and it seemed solid enough to cross. I told my dad that crossing over the car was probably our only hope of making it out alive. He was worried the car would give out, but I was pretty confident it wouldn’t. Making sure my dad was safe in the tree, I ran across the car and jumped onto the cliffside, grabbing some plants to stabilize me. The feeling of being on solid ground again, even if it was solid ground almost as steep as a wall, was a wonderful feeling. I told my dad he had to follow me, and that it was our only hope. He ran over the car as well, and soon we were both on solid ground. It was such a wonderful feeling to know both my father and I were on solid ground, not on some tree who knows how high up, holding up a totaled car.

It was actually really good that the car ended upside down, because it was much easier to walk across the bottom of a car then the top of a car.

Now we just had to make it up the cliffside. I told my dad that it was steep and that he had to use plants as holds on his way up. I also warned him that he had to pull on the plants before trusting them, as we were on a cliffside, and many of them would not have secure rooting systems.

I scurried up the cliffside fairly quickly (must be all the hiking steep slopes in deep powder snowboarding) and kept yelling at my dad to make sure he was still conscious and coming. I was climbing up in bare feet, and I was worried about getting bitten by a snake or spider. I was also worried that since we were in the middle of a rainforest, that we may get pounced by a hungry jaguar.

Once we made it to the road, we started walking towards Jaco. I didn’t want to have to walk the 6 km in bare feet, and with my dad being so out of it, so I tried to flag down a car. The first car drove right past me, but the second car stopped for me. We were very lucky that the man spoke both English and Spanish. He was like a guardian angel.

Once I got into the car, the guy turned the light on so I could see myself. It was then I saw how bloody I was. There was blood all over me. I had it pouring out from a cut on my head, as well as blood all over the rest of my body. I still couldn’t feel any pain though, as the adrenaline was still running too strong. We asked to be taken to the nearest hospital.

The man brought us to the 24 hour clinic in Jaco. It was about four in the morning by the time we made it to the clinic. The man stayed with us, and helped us translate and deal with the cops and rental people, until almost nine in the morning. Like I said, he was like our guardian angel.

Out injuries were as follows: I ended up with a broken pelvic bone (again!), a broken knee, three stitches on my face, a dislocated vertebrae on my neck along with bruising, a concussion, some internal bleeding, and many other cuts and bruises. My feet were shredded apart from all of the broken glass. The neck injury is the scariest. I am still in a neck brace, and I must get a cat scan before I can take it off, because if the dislocation is too severe, and I move my neck up and down, I could end up paralyzed. The good news is I may be able to get a free medical upgrade to first class on the way home, haha, ? As long as I am a good girl, and keep my neckbrace on until further testing, I should be fine though.

My dad ended up with a concussion and a fractured collar bone.

When the police officers came to the hospital, they told us that our being alive was a complete miracle. By all accounts we should have been dead. They told us that we had rolled over 150 FEET down a cliff, the car was completely crushed and totaled, and that we hit the ONLY place on the ONLY tree on that vista which could have stopped a car, and that if we had rolled even a foot more either way, we could have fallen off of the 700 FOOT vista to certain death! They said it was a miracle that we even survived rolling down the first cliff, let alone being saved from the second cliff. The police and the doctors told us we shouldn’t even be alive, let alone have been able to make it out on our own.

The next day, the insurance guy was reporting the crash as a fatality until the police told him that we were in fact alive, because the insurance agent didn’t believe anyone could have survived such a crash.

If this same crash had happened in a movie, everyone would say how fake it was. They would say “come on, how could the people could survive rolling down that cliff, and then how would they just happen to crash the right way onto the only tree that could keep them from falling down the 700 foot vista to their deaths?” But it really happened to us! My dad and I keep looking at each other, and are just so amazed and happy to be alive.

We still can’t believe all this happened to us. It doesn’t even seem real. We are so lucky. The angels and God were really watching over us that night.

Thank-you Divine intervention….