Car stuck on beach

This happened on 14th february. I was awestruck by the sheer power of a 4 wheel drive car and the utility of this feature. I mean, I always knew what this '4 wheel drive' jargon means, but for the first time I saw the remarkable difference that a 4x4 power machine can make during off-roading, as compared to a more conventional rear drive car. On Valentine's day, when most of you folks were out with ur dates, I and my 4 male colleagues drove in our Mercedes C280 to a far off beach - about 25 kms from our place. I know the plan sucks on V-day, but that's how it is in a foreign land - come whatever may u r always stuck around with the same bunch of people. Anyways. I was driving the car. The beach was beautiful and to soak in more of the pristine natural beauty, Vijay on the back seat, was pumping me to take the car closer to the water. I kept driving towards the ocean through the quick sand and soon ...the worst thing happened. Our car with 5 of us inside it, got stuck in the sand! We tried hard to come out, but harder we tried deeper the car tyre would sink in. Man, we were doomed. What do we do now? Almost all of us were engineers. How could we let such a god gifted opportunity - to apply our indigenous mechanical skills - to go, without making the most of it? It was extremely windy and we got down to work. I would disucss some ideas that may come to you in such a situation, and would seem very bright initially, but they would NOT work. We thought of fitting a jack under the car and lift the wheel. Car jack of Merc, is a scientific instrument in itself. Its very different from the usual car jacks. See the picture which I found somewhere on the net, which depicts such a car jack.

The car has an inbuilt hole (which had to be discovered), where the jack would fit in and there is no other way that it can be done (which we figured out after trying various angles and positions for 45 minutes). In the mean time Gopi went to another car that was standing far away to get a 'normal' car jack. He also asked the driver of that car to direct a rescue vehicle to us in case any happens to pass by. After a LOT of crap ideas and some decent ones, we were able to lift the two rear tires one by one and put stones under them. By this time we were all covered with the beach sand, even eaten some of it, quite tired, and after out best efforts I didn't have even 10% hope that we would be able to drive out because even if we could escape this pit, its sand all around. Just then I saw a big old car coming towards us. It was a Hilux 4x4 car driven by a gora man with pierced lips and eyelid. His girlfriend was sitting next to him. I believe the driver of the other car (the guy who lent us the normal car jack) had directed him to the bunch of desi idiots. This Hilux was cruising towards us extremely smoothly. For a while, I thought even his car would get stuck in sand, and professional help need to be called to rescue both the cars. But this guy could smoothly come, stop, turn back, move ahead etc in the same sand, where we were stuck and struggling for last 1.5 hrs. I don't know why, but this guy had a very strong synthetic rope, which looked more like a strap and the two claws to hook on the two cars. He pulled it out, fixed the rope in the two claws, anchored one on our car and another on his and our car was ready to be pulled out. It took him just 5 minutes to do all the setting. It seems that he comes across people like us quite often. He pulled out our car so easily - like a hot knife from butter - just like that! We really thanked him and all, and he started on his journey all the more deep into that sand field. Again, without any difficulty. I felt like an idiot, first to buy a Merc, then having driven it in sand, and then having got stuck & this guy came with an old looking vehicle (ignore the 4 wheel fact for a second) pulled us out and carried on with the rest of his journey - all without straining a muscle of his forehead. Man, I was impressed! Kapil got into the car and started driving it out. I think he paniced a l'il bit or something and the worst thing happened again. We were stuck in sand - Again. Terrible. TERRIBLE!!! V-day with a bunch of guys - very bad - they being your colleagues - badder - your car being stuck in sand - all the more worse - your car being stuck in the same sand AGAIN - Arrrrrrrgh! Some1 who said about universe conspiring shit was right - Its celestial conspiration that's bent upon screwing me up! Luckily the Hilux guy saw our S.O.S signals and came back to help us again. We said we were sorry and confeesed that we r idiots, but we need his help again. He said no worries boys - but get a 4 wheel drive next time. His car deserved that praise i believe! He pulled us out again. I was double impressed by this 4 wheel funda. This time I carefully drove all the way up to the road. This guy dint charge us a single penny for this, when we offered to pay him. If we would have got professional tow-away service, it would have lightened our pockets by atleast 400 dollars - may be even more. We all were so involved into this entire episode that it didnot even strike me to take pictures. My bad. Looking at pictures with this post would have been fun. But all in all it was great adventure.
Thanks Hilux guy. I like your dirty car! New Zealand folks are very helpful.