..and then our bus crashed

The Great Ocean Road is one of the world's most scenic coastal drives, where you can see The Twelve Apostles, iconic surf breaks, waterfalls, and rain forests. Our tour guide, Ash, was in charge of driving the bus, narrating the sites to us, and navigating our way around the sites once we arrived at them. We invested our full trust in him that he would allow us to make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime trip; our faith in him did not cease when our runaway bus almost flew off a cliff.

I heard it before I saw it. We had pulled over at a rest stop (rumor has it we were not even supposed to stop here, but one girl had to use the bathroom so good old Ash gave into her complaints) and not even two minutes after the last member of our group disembarked the bus I heard the ear-shattering crash of a huge metal object crushing into another huge metal object. First, I thought we were being bombed. Then, I turned around and perhaps one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen in my life; our passenger-less, driver-less and apparently brake-less bus, steered by gravity alone, crashed into one, two, three parked cars until hitting a tree above a curb and coming to a smoky, glass-shattered, gas-leaking stop. The rest stop happened to be at a highly-elevated beach overlooking the ocean and had that tree not been there, the bus would have went soaring off into the depths of the water below.

I suddenly flashbacked an hour ago on the bus when we were on the road making a right turn and after hearing a series of responsive whines and groans of the bus, I joked "Hope those aren't the brakes... I feel real safe now!" Irony must have heard me.

No one knew what to do. Ash didn't know what to do. How do you possibly recover from something like that? Out of respect for his panic-stricken, job-threatened, sanity-robbed state we assumed him to be in, our entire group ducked away into the neighboring shops and cafes, checking in about every half-hour for word on what we should do next.

While we waited, I have never felt so much empathy towards a man I hardly knew, but we tried to make the best out of it. We shopped around, tossed a frisbee at the beach, had the best gelato I've ever had in my life, and randomly fed a pack of cockatus. Admittedly, we all agreed it ended up being a really good time. After surprisingly less than two hours we spotted what had to be our replacement bus winding its way down the road towards the wreckage; it was time to return to the scene and discover the verdict.

I'll never know how Ash managed to keep it together. With patience and an obviously fake content look, he remained cool, calm, and collected and vowed that "Even though it was the worst day of his life, it didn't have to be ours." With that he handed us money to get the necessary items for our BBQ dinner. We bid him farewell, attempting to cheer him up and promising him a hearty plate when he finally me us at the cottage we'd be staying at that evening. We kept his plate warm for him all night and upon his arrival gave him a slow clap and a standing ovation. We truly admired him for the way he handled the situation and assured him that none of us would hold it against him. In fact, we made him hangout with us all night, play games with us to get his mind off of it, and managed to put a smile back on a face I thought would never do so again. The trip ended up being one of the most amazing experiences of my life. The sites we saw were absolutely beautiful:

There must be something that can be learned from all this, an uplifting moral lesson of sorts. Never doubt that a group of strangers will have your back in however dire the situation may be? Patience and and a positive attitude can alleviate any moment of crisis? But I think its got to be, when in doubt: put on the E brake.