- A pair of tourists in Hawaii followed a wrong GPS route straight into a harbor.
- Christie Hutchinson filmed two women trying to get out of a car partially submerged in the harbor.
A pair of tourists drove their car into a harbor after mistakenly following GPS directions in Hawaii, and appeared confused when the car started filling up with water.
The incident happened on Saturday at the Honokohau Small Boat Harbor in Kailua-Kona, a region on the west coast of Hawaii, per The Washington Post.
A video by Christie Hutchinson, a witness to the incident, showed the two women buckled into their Dodge Caravan while it was headlights deep in the murky water.
"I was just sitting there trying to seek shelter from the rain, and then the next thing, I saw a car drive directly past our boat straight into the harbor at a pretty decent speed," Hutchinson told The Post. "It was so confidently done, they didn't have a look of panic on their face. They were still smiling."
Hutchinson's video on Sunday shows the car's windshield wipers still moving as the car slowly tipped forwards, but the women did not appear to be panicking.
"And it took us a second to figure out what was going on because they didn't seem panicked or have any sense of urgency to get out of the car," she told Hawaii News Now.
"Pretty sure that wasn't supposed to happen," Hutchinson said in her video, while other witnesses shouted at the tourists to get out of the car.
Eventually, the tourists unbuckled themselves. The passenger climbed out through the window and waded out, while the driver sat on the window, seemingly unsure of how to escape.
The video also showed several men stepping in to try to save the women, and get the car out of the harbor. At one point, a man stepped in to help the driver get out of the vehicle, and onto dry land.
The video also captured the moment the car sank into the harbor — dipping into the water nose first, then disappearing beneath the surface.
The video was later hauled out of the water by tow crews, per Hawaii News Now.
Hutchinson told Insider that the tourists told her their car was not insured.
She added that she believed that the tourists were sisters, but that she did not have any other information on them. However, no one was hurt in the incident, she said.
When on land, the tourists said that they were on their way to a manta ray tour, Hutchinson told Insider.
"There are manta companies directly on either side of the ramp and I can see how such a mistake could happen in heavy rain perhaps," she said.
Samantha Tavares, an information specialist for Hawaii's Department of Transportation, told The Post that the occurrence was "kind of rare" because the GPS directions are usually accurate in the state.
Tavares gave advice for tourists in Hawaii, telling The Post: "If you see a body of water, don't drive towards it."
The Hawaii Police Department did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment sent outside of regular business hours.