Point Reyes Light - December 30, 2004
Bolinas woman escapes tsunami
By Jacob Resneck
After a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck southeast Asia, Miguel and Miriam Bustamante of Bolinas spent a frantic day wondering whether their 22-year-old daughter, holidaying in Thailand, was still alive.
"It was hell. We were really hopeless that night," Miguel Bustamante told The Light. "We knew about the earthquake and the tsunami, and we started seeing the news and the videos they were showing. We were half-dead. It was the anguish of not knowing how she was."
Mariana Bustamante and her boyfriend Rikki Aldridge of San Anselmo were backpacking on Koh Lanta Island, off of Thailand’s west coast, where they rented a bungalow on the beach. The next day, a 9.0 earthquake centered off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, triggered a tsunami walloping coastlines from Asia to eastern Africa. The death toll is expected to climb as high as 100,000, the International Red Cross announced Wednesday.
Miguel Bustamante said he and his brother spent the day on the phone to the American embassy in Thailand and hotels and hospitals in the region, desperate for information about their daughter. When the phone lines on Koh Lanta were restored and they still hadn’t heard anything, they began to fear the worst.
"We were very hopeless," he said. "Then, at midnight Dec. 26, the phone rang and it was her. We just cried on the phone. It was pretty emotional. They hadn’t called because the telephone lines were down, and when they were back up, they were spending time trying to get off the island."
In an email to family and friends, Mariana explained how right before the earthquake, the couple decided to get up early and rent motorcycles to tour the island.
"A big wave came so we went up on the hill for six hours and we watched from high up," she wrote in the email to family. Those who were inside the bungalows were killed by the force of the waves. The Bolinas couple were lucky to lose only their luggage in what is already being called the worst tsunami disaster in recorded history.
With their accommodations destroyed, the couple spent the night on the ground in the highlands but were fed by a hospitable Thai family who took them in.
After leaving Koh Lanta, the couple traveled to the island of Krabi and plan to travel to Koh Samui. While they lost their passports and plane tickets, they had the good sense to keep photocopies, Miguel Bustamante said.
"She’s a pretty experienced traveler that way," he said of his daughter.