More vacation disasters

Monday, July 23, 2007

Here are more reader submissions to our request for vacation disaster stories.

It never rains in Puerto Rico

By Amy Angelilli

Saturday, Day 1:

2 p.m. Chris and I arrive in Puerto Rico where "the Sun always shines."

2:15 p.m. Using trash bags as umbrellas, we wade through the puddles to the Tres Palmas Guest House.

2:16 p.m. Our room can't accommodate us — with our luggage.

2:18 p.m. For $60 more, we take another room that fits both — as long as we hold our breath.

12:15 a.m. In line at one of Puerto Rico's hottest discos.

1:30 a.m. Still in line.

3:00 a.m. Journey back to Tres Palmas.

3:01 a.m. Someone grabs my purse. I'm on the ground. Chris screams.

Mugger No. 1 stares at Chris. Mugger No. 2 fights for my purse.

3:02 a.m. They run with my cash. I'm bloody and bruised. It's a traditional Puerto Rican mugging!

3:05 a.m. A nearby apartment security guard watches from behind a fence. I yell. He doesn't speak English. I yell in Spanish. He says inside his fence is his problem and outside the fence is mine.

3:06 a.m. Not rain nor muggers will sour our vacation. Pray to sun gods.

Sunday, Day 2:

11:17 a.m. At the beach. A raindrop.

11:18 a.m. Muchos raindrops.

3:30 p.m. We ask Ernesto, the desk clerk, directions to Old San Juan.

4:20 p.m. Wait for the bus.

5:25 p.m. Still waiting.

6:25 p.m. We're in the cultural Mecca of Old San Juan — the Hard Rock Cafe!

2:35 a.m. Back at Tres Palmas, I suggest a swim. Chris and I change into our suits.

2:45 a.m. I leap into the water. Chris stands paralyzed. Ernesto is naked. A Polaroid moment!

Monday, Day 3:

1 p.m. Arrive in Old San Juan.

1:05 p.m. Rain.

8 p.m. Search for working toilet. There's no water before Saturday, the island hasn't seen rain in five months.

8:01 p.m. Rain.

1:55 a.m. No rain. Ernesto and I lie in lounge chairs searching for the stars. I fall asleep.

2:05 a.m. I awaken to find I'm no longer alone in my chair. I decline Ernesto's offer for sex and run to pray a rosary.

Tuesday, Day 4:

12:10 p.m. Arrive in El Yunque Rain Forest.

12:20 p.m. Rain.

1:55 p.m. Eat lunch.

1:56 p.m. No rain.

2:20 p.m. On beautiful El Luquillo Beach.

2:25 p.m. Rain.

Wednesday, Day 5:

9:30 a.m. At Quality Rent-A-Car, we put a $300 deposit on a car that lacks brakes and a side-view mirror.

12:15 p.m. Puntas Salinas Beach.

12:16 p.m. Key sticks in the ignition.

3:15 p.m. After lunch, another vehicle is blocking us into our spot.

4:20 p.m. Six police officers arrive. Were they at Dunkin' Donuts when we were getting mugged?

5:05 p.m. Lost. Stuck in rush-hour traffic, we've accumulated four conflicting sets of directions. At least it's not raining.

5:08 p.m. It's raining.

5:10 p.m. Chris threatens to buy suntanning cream.

5:35 p.m. Surrender to the elements and return to Tres Palmas.

6 p.m. Needy for tranquillity, I debate whether to drink or swim. I swim.

6:05 p.m. I lose my footing on the coral reefs and fall. If a meat slicer cut my foot off, it would be less painful.

6:30 p.m. I'm in one of Puerto Rico's finest tourist attractions — the local emergency room. I picked a good day to visit because today there is no electricity!

7:35 p.m. The absence of power threatens the departure of the "meat slicer" sensation.

7:36 p.m. I threaten the doctor.

7:37 p.m. Off to radiology.

8:03 p.m. X-ray No. 1 doesn't work. X-ray No. 2 is of the wrong part of my foot. X-ray No. 3 is the charm.

8:25 p.m. A medical professional wraps my foot.

9:05 p.m. The doctor orders me a muscle relaxer shot.

9:15 p.m. Chris holds a flashlight on me while the nurse sticks it to me.

9:25 p.m. Fill out paperwork.

9:50 p.m. More paperwork.

11:30 p.m. Covered in sand, sweat and sea water with my leg in a wrap to my knee, I'm desperate to shower.

11:32 p.m. No tap water.

11:35 p.m. Sponge bathe out of two paper cups filled with water from the cooler.

Thursday, Day 6:

10:30 a.m. Return our wreck to Quality.

10:55 a.m. We walk — well, Chris walks and I hobble to the beach.

11 a.m. A hotel employee offers us a free lunch.

1 p.m. Chris and I eat our "free" lunch followed by a two-hour pitch for time-share property.

2:55 p.m. We tell them what they can do with their time share.

6 p.m. Walking back to Tres Palmas, a guy driving by asks us for directions to Sunshine Hotel.

6:05 p.m. He asks again. I'm slightly annoyed.

6:15 p.m. He asks again. I'm annoyed.

6:20 p.m. He asks again. I'm very annoyed.

6:35 p.m. He asks again. I tell him he should know where the Sunshine Hotel is — it's the only sunshine on the God-forsaken island!

6:45 p.m. Rain.

9:30 p.m. Chris is afraid to leave the guesthouse thinking something will make us miss our morning flight. I drink Medalla, the beer of Puerto Rico.

12:05 a.m. I pass out.

Friday, Day 7:

6 a.m. Rain storm.

6:55 a.m. At the airport, we buy souvenir umbrellas. Adios Puerto Rico.

7:05 a.m. Sun comes out.

Waterlogged in Florida

By Ann Camy

Of all the vacation disasters I remember from our family vacations, our trip to Miami Beach when I was 13 had to be the worst.

We drove from Denver to Miami Beach in a station wagon — Mom, Dad, my five siblings and I. I had recently had surgery on my hip, and I had to use one crutch throughout the vacation. Bummer! When we arrived in Miami Beach, we stayed in a motel near the beach, and my youngest brother, a toddler, was teething. He screamed all night long. My poor mother had to take my brother out to the car at night so he wouldn't disturb other people trying to sleep in the motel.

My middle sister (6 years old at the time) was playing in the waves on the beach when one big one came in and carried her away from the shore. What a panic while people were trying to get hold of her to get her safely back to shore. We did get her back, but she wouldn't go near the water for the rest of the vacation.

We visited a Seminole Indian village one day; we wanted to see the Indians wrestle alligators. As we strolled through the village, there were huge pits with alligators in them. My oldest brother, keeping in mind what a pain our youngest brother had been, leaned over the wall to one of the pits, looked all around, nudged Mom and said, "Quick, Mom, no one's looking; toss him in."

On our way back to Colorado, we decided to visit the Cyprus Gardens to see the water show. We got caught in a cloudburst while driving through the Everglades. All of our luggage was strapped on top of the station wagon under a tarp. Even so, the rain soaked through the tarp and our luggage, destroying all of our clothes. We made a beeline to Wichita Falls, Texas, to visit Mom's brother and his family. We knew we could borrow some clothes from them to get us home.

We also stopped in Austin, Texas, en route home. We were all at the motel swimming pool. Mom was at the shallow end with the little kids. I had been floating near the side of the pool, but I had my eyes closed and drifted out to the middle of the deep end. When I realized what I had done, I panicked and went under. The third time under, the lifeguard finally grabbed me and pulled me out. I was sick as a dog after that.

We did make it home all in one piece, but I don't think any of us would ever say that we'd had a marvelous vacation.

My worst trip so far

By C.T. Sartain

1. A recent trip that I made to Africa began when I arrived at the airport without my tickets to Houston (where I was to catch my flight to Joberg). I had to buy a ticket to Houston at the airport.

2. While on the bus leaving the Joburg airport, my camera bag disappeared. Luckily it only had filters and batteries in it.

3. On the way to my next stop at Nairobi, I left my day pack at the X-ray check-through and I had to have the British air van race back from the plane to retrieve it.

4. In Nairobi, I couldn't find my tour group at the Grosvenor Hotel because they had changed hotels without notifying me. I left a note on the bulletin board and they contacted me the next day at the Hilton Hotel.

5. As we were getting ready to leave for the coast, my tentmate was robbed at the Barkley's Band, so we had to stay two extra days to sort it out.

6. En route to Lake Nukuru, the entire gear box in our truck fell out. We backed up the rest of the way into the park. The next day, our leaders took the pieces back to Nairobi for repairs, and we waited a week for the work to be finished.

7. A few nights after our trip began again, we were camped in the bush when a puff adder was spied in our campground. It was frightening, but our leader killed it with a shovel, cooked it and gave it to the locals.

8. Between Sudan and Kenya, we were caught in a "No Man's Land" in their border war. The Sudanese soldiers riding shotgun on our truck returned fire, and no one was hit.

9. In Juba, in Southern Sudan, my tentmate developed a severe attack of malaria and had to be flown by UNICEF to Khartoum.

10. While we were camped in Juba, the British Embassy told us to go the long way to Khartoum because of bandit attacks. We didn't have enough gas for that, so one of the policemen suggested that we buy two 50-gallon drums from his brother on the black market.

11. I observed the above conversation as I was throwing up behind a tree in the main square. I didn't realize at the time that I was coming down with malaria.

12. I left the group in Khartoum to fly to Munich to pick up camera equipment. However, during my stopover in Cairo, the Lufthansa plane had a flat tire and we sat at the airport for 2 hours while new tires were flown in from Frankfurt.

13. As I was leaving Frankfurt to return to Cairo, something was wrong with the plane, so we had to return to Frankfurt to change planes.

14. Back in Africa, at Aswan, I fell up a flight of stairs (they were not all the same height) and broke my nose and knocked some teeth loose. I drank lots of wine to kill the pain as I took a train to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, where they put a bandage on my nose and gave me some pain pills.

15. I had scheduled an Ethiopian tour next, but everyone had canceled except me, so I went alone. Abercrombie and Kent didn't cancel the tour, so I had a personal driver and guide for my short trip into the country. Perhaps the bandage on my nose made them feel sorry for me.

16. In Bahar Dar, there was no water because it was the dry season. We were given free cokes and sent back to Addis Ababa.

17. While in Ethiopia, I finally came down with recognizable malaria, so I caught the next flight home.

18. However, when I arrived home, no one was there. My father-in-law had died and everyone was in Wichita at his funeral.

Slippery when wet

By Frank and Regina Canino

Our "Vacation disaster" happened last year. My husband, Frank and I were looking forward to a cruise to the Hawaiian Islands.

We arrived in Honolulu and boarded our ship (Norwegian Cruise Lines — The Pride of America) at noon.

We had the welcome buffet and a drink and then went to our cabin to unpack. After unpacking, we went back to the deck to watch the ship pull away from the dock. It started raining a nice cool rain as we walked to the back of the ship. As we were walking, Frank slipped on the wet deck and fell. People around us called for a ship medic and they took him to the infirmary on the ship. Well, ‘THEY' must have known how bad it was because they called an ambulance and handed me an envelope with the ship's itinerary "in case we wanted to catch up with the ship." THAT was all the help the people on the ship gave us.

At the Straub hospital in Honolulu, they took X-rays of his leg and found a broken femur and multiple broken bones in his knee.

The hospital gave him some pain pills and some crutches and a splint and literally kicked us out. The emergency room doctors said "it was not life threatening" and so we would have to leave. I asked if we could at least stay in the waiting room until we could leave in the morning to get a flight to Hilo to catch up with our ship because we had no money with us and all of our clothes and money were on the ship. The emergency room doctor again said "NO." She said we would have to get a room in a motel because we could not stay there.

We called a taxi and he took us to a motel. Thank goodness we had a credit card on us.

Unable to sleep, we left the hotel at 6 a.m., again trying to get Frank into and out of another taxi with all of those broken bones.

We waited at the airport until 1 p.m. to catch a flight to Hilo to get our belongings from the ship. Arriving in Hilo, Frank had to get into and out of another taxi that took us to the ship. We waited about an hour for the ship to send a wheelchair to get Frank on board. While we were in Honolulu, the ship had removed our names from the roster so we had some trouble getting back on board.

Once on board, the ship's "people" told us that we needed to "hurry" because the ship was leaving the dock to go to Kona and we needed to get off.

We packed as fast as we could and got off to call another taxi to go back to the airport to fly back to Honolulu.

We waited at the airport again until 10:30 pm to get a flight home to Denver.

All this time Frank has a broken femur, multiple broken bones in his knee and Percocet for the pain.

So our "cruise" lasted a total of 6 hours on ship, countless hours in airports, four taxi cabs, three airplanes, and one airport bus all within two days.

Snap goes the ankle

By Diane Martin

July 2003: Our Infamous Vacation! My husband and I were six days into a long-awaited motorcycle ride from Denver up the coast of California, Oregon and Washington. It was the third of July and we had checked into our hotel in Gold Beach, Ore., and walked a few blocks to get to the water for a jet boat trip scheduled the next day up the Rogue River (which we were very excited about!).

We then made the bad decision to take the beach walk back to our hotel. We had to go through a large thicket of bushes and then cross a lengthy stretch of 2-foot high driftwood to get to the beach, and in stepping down from the last one, my ankle rolled and snapped. Because of the tall bushes, the paramedics had a fun time trying to locate us, but were finally able to cart me out on a stretcher, over the driftwood and through the bushes (which I might add, has given me new respect for that job!). After X-rays at a local hospital, every bone in my ankle was broken requiring surgery — which they were unable to do as they had no surgery unit.

There were also no surgeons available within 2 hours of there, since it was the Fourth of July holiday. So, it seemed like the only thing left to do was get back to Denver the following day for surgery. This was yet another adventure, with my foot in a large boot, my ankle not set and a pair of very old crutches wrapped with rags for pads which the hospital was able to locate for the trip. It required a 2-hour trip via ambo cab (with my husband following behind on the motorcycle) to Coos Bay, Ore., and then through two more very painful plane changes in Portland and Seattle and then to Denver, where I was still not able to have surgery for three more days (again, because of the holiday). And my husband had to make the long trip back home alone on the motorcycle. A vacation we will never forget!

Not a fan of the van

By Alice Deanda

In 1988, my two daughters, three young granddaughters and I went on a driving vacation to California in my daughter's fairly new 1987 Chrysler Dodge Caravan. We hadn't gotten to Walsenburg when the van started to jerk. Thinking we had gotten bad gas, we headed straight for a gas station to fill up the tank again.

Back on the road and headed to Taos, N.M., the van stalled and would not start, so we called for a tow to Taos. We were in the middle of the mountains in New Mexico and the tow truck driver could not take us all in the tow truck or let us ride in the van.

So I sent my oldest daughter and the two youngest granddaughters with the driver hollering to her that if we couldn't find each other in Taos, we would meet at the police station. My other daughter, granddaughter, and I proceeded to hitch hike. About that time, a terrible lightning and thunder storm came up and we were in fear of getting stuck by lightning. Luckily, two women from Taos picked us up and drove us to town. Little did we know that they could hardly wait to get rid of us because there were two women escapees from the State Hospital in Pueblo and they weren't sure we weren't those women.

The mechanics at the garage where the van was towed blew out the gas lines and got the car back on the road again. We took off to Sante Fe where the van started acting up again. Back to a mechanic in town where they really couldn't find anything wrong with the van.

Off we go to Flagstaff where we waited for the dealership to open so they could check out the van. They could not find anything wrong and we proceeded to travel west across Arizona. When we got to Needles, Calif., we waited most of the day under a tree in 125 degree heat for the sun to go down because I refused to travel across the desert in that awful van with small children in the car.

Finally, we made it to Disneyland and wouldn't you know we never had trouble with the van when there were people, garages, dealerships or any assistance we might have needed.

That's not the end of the story. We cut our vacation short and didn't go to Sequoia National Park because I couldn't risk having problems with the van in the mountains. Needless to say, we continued to have problems with the van all the way home even after getting the fuel pump replaced in St. George, Utah. The problems with the van never stopped. My daughter put as much money in repairs in that van as she originally paid for the vehicle.

We laugh about it now, but it was a very frightening experience at the time.

Tulips and windmills — eventually

By Sally Maguire

On April 10, 2005, I was booked on a flight from DIA to Amsterdam where I was to board a boat for a 10-day river cruise in Holland and Belgium. Because I live well south of the airport and the weather report predicted snow, I went up to Denver the night before and stayed overnight in a motel.

Perhaps the first clue that all would not go well was the fact that about 9 p.m., when I was in my nightgown, the fire alarm went off and all residents had to evacuate. False alarm, fortunately.

I arrived at DIA at 7 a.m. April 10. Ten minutes later the airport shut down because of snow. After much confusion, instructions for rebooking and chits for overnight hotel stays were given out. Needless to say, it was impossible to book a hotel room using the number given.

I was standing at the display where one can make hotel/motel/reservations (also equally impossible to get through to a living person), when a nice looking man standing behind me said he had a four-wheel drive vehicle and would take me into Denver where I might have better luck getting a hotel room.

Now I had been brought up never to accept a ride from a strange man, but I figured since I was 77 at the time, risks were small that he had some plan to sell me into white slavery. He was extremely nice and after a somewhat harrowing drive, he delivered me to my niece's home in Capitol Hill where I spent the day and night. I confirmed my flight for the next day and notified the cruise company of my delay. I asked that they notify the boat captain who could pass on the information to my 90-year old aunt, my traveling companion, whom I was to meet in Amsterdam.

April 11 was a beautiful bright Colorado day. I arrived at DIA at 8 a.m. for a 10:25 flight. I stood in line with THOUSANDS of people for 6 hours before I even reached the ticket counter. I couldn't have done without the help of a young college professor from New Zealand who kept looking out for places for me to sit down for a few minutes. He even tried to get a wheel chair for me but was told "no wheelchair without a boarding pass." No airline personnel ever appeared to talk to anyone in the lines.

When, after 6 exhausting hours, I finally reached the ticket counter, I was told I could get a flight "sometime tomorrow." I said that was unacceptable and pointed out that another airline had an overnight flight to Frankfort where I could probably connect with a flight to Amsterdam.

The agent said, "Oh, they'll be full." I insisted she at least try. The airline put me on standby and I made the flight.

When I finally arrived in Amsterdam, the boat had left, so I not only missed the boat but also the first day tour of Amsterdam. I had a woman taxi driver who spoke excellent English. When we found the boat had departed for Hoorn, she offered to drive me there for 120 euros. The euro then was worth about $1.30. I had changed money at the airport, so off we went to Hoorn.

The boat was in the harbor and all the passengers gathered by the gangplank, awaiting a tour of the town. My 90-year old aunt was right at the front of the group and when she said "Sally!," all the passengers applauded. They all thought I was missing somewhere between Denver and Amsterdam because the cruise company had never relayed my message. My aunt was planning to contact the U.S. Embassy to find out what happened to me.

The river cruise was fine (it rained a lot). The tulips were in bloom and the windmills as advertised, but I have approached subsequent overseas trips out of DIA with great trepidation. Getting there is NOT half the fun.

Mission (Beach): Impossible

By the Rodriguez Family

Back in December 2006 we started to plan our summer trip for this year. After thinking, we decided on taking a nice relaxing vacation to Mission Beach, San Diego. But to mix things up, we were going to take a family road trip down to San Diego, and instead of a hotel room, rent a beach house. We went online and found a place. We took one of the rooms that was open for the summer from June 2 to 9. We left on the first of June, and traveled for 8 hours to Las Vegas for the first night. We asked a travel agent to book us a room for under $100 that was near the strip.

When we got to the hotel, it was everything but pleasant. Across the street was an adult video store, and surrounding us from neighboring sides were strip clubs and nude bars. We have two children, and I guess we assumed an agent wouldn't be approving hotels that were this close to things like this. Anyway, we went out and walked around. Of course, the one night we stop in Vegas it's 102 degrees out. That was a ton of joy. We ate at this NASCAR restaurant, seeing as it wasn't very crowded, but the service was horrible, and we were left sitting in an empty restaurant for 15 minutes before someone came to take our order. The food wasn't that great either, once we finally got it. The next morning we got up and were on our way, because we had an 11-hour drive before we would get to Mission Beach.

The day wasn't too bad, except for being confined to a small space inside a car for most of your waking hours, but it was a relief to finally be at our vacation destination when we arrived around 6 at Mission Beach. We had been given a combination to a lock box on the door that would hold the keys to our house, but there wasn't one on our door, and it almost seemed to be occupied. Someone from above, who turned out later to be the husband of the woman who we rented from, told us to go see his wife in the next house over. So we did, and we told her that we were here, and who we were. We even showed her the paperwork she faxed over to us. And we looked at her. After several moments, she said two words "I'm sorry." She said that for 30 seconds, before telling us what was going on. She had thought we were coming on the 14th, and had not planned for us to be here on the 2nd, even though that's what she wrote on our paperwork. So it almost looked as though we weren't going to have a place to stay on the beach.

She told us to go enjoy the town for a couple hours while she fixed up a vacant house for them. So we went and got some groceries. After taking a walk on the beach, we came back to the house, just as they were finishing up. We were given a key, and once more she apologized.

Things looked as though they were going to turn out OK, but really, the fun had just started. The next morning we were rudely awoken at 6:30 with hammering from the house above us. You see, every beach house is really split into three houses, in order for them to pay the expensive rent to be so close to the beach. So the house above us was doing remodeling. This continued every morning. Around 6 we would be woken with the sounds of an airplane flying right over us, because the airport was only a few miles away. One night we were woken at 2:30 by a bunch of college students partying across the street. And they were demolishing and rebuilding a couple houses around us, so that also added to the noise. During our stay they even decided to paint the exterior of our part of the house, and so we couldn't go in the house until all the painters got out of the way. When we went to grill, the grill had no propane, when we went to vacuum all the sand, the vacuum didn't work, we could hear every word of the other house right next to us. These beach houses made hotel walls seem like they had sound proof barriers. It was just one problem after another. One of the doors didn't even lock properly! Anyone could go yank at the door, and it would open.

Finally Saturday came again, and we left. We drove through El Paso, where we got lost for an hour, and then finally made it to Carlsbad Caverns to see the bats fly out that night. The next morning we drove home, except there was a traffic jam on I-25 because of night road work. After escaping from that, we made it home on Monday, June 11th, at around 9:30. I'm sure that will be the last road trip we'll take in a long time, and I'm sure next time we'll probably just choose a hotel.

We never had Paris

By Jacalyn Youngblood

For my 50th birthday I wanted to go to Paris. My husband thought the flight leaving Denver was 10:30 p.m. but it was 8:30 p.m. The plane had already boarded when we arrived. It was the last plane of the day. There was a problem and the crew was doing a final check of the plane. We were told if we raced we might be able to get on the plane. We made it.

A friend from work had recommended our hotel and nearby restaurants. She had described a beautiful balcony with plants and a breakfast table. We looked out our window the next morning and saw astro-turf and plastic plants. She described a great restaurant that was within blocks of our hotel. We walked a few miles and finally found it. I asked the concierge where the pool and sauna were located. She said a few blocks.

It was not until our return and I asked my friend if she hated me that we discovered we had been staying at the wrong hotel. It was a hotel chain and we had printed out the wrong Tulip Inn and handed it to our cab driver. The hotel we were supposed to stay at was the same price, but nicer. One day I was pickpocketed twice.

On the flight home over Greenland we hit some turbulence and my husband was in the bathroom being tossed around. My husband had wanted to get new green luggage because "everyone has black and it is hard to tell which luggage is yours." We got a call when we got home that we had someone's green luggage and please return it to the owner. All in all, we had a great time and hope to return to Paris one day.

The trip to hell, round trip

By Carl Bruckman

I'm sure most of you have flown on commercial airlines. Most of the time things go fairly smoothly. The plane is only a little late. You have to sit next to someone who only mildly smells. Your luggage is the last onto the carousel — at least it arrived!

Let me tell you about a trip my wife, Laura, and I took to London last year. It may change your attitude from angry to "Thank God!" the next time you encounter a glitch.

Last March Laura got a call from a nurse at Guy's Hospital in London. Laura's mother was gravely ill and may not last but a week or two. Naturally, Laura wanted to make one last visit so we booked a flight. The earliest flight that we could afford had a change of planes in Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

Our flight from Denver was delayed about an hour, which left us only 40 minutes in Chicago to run from one end of the airport to the other — same airline — gates about a mile and a half apart. I say run, but actually Laura needs a wheelchair for long distances so I ran and she held the luggage in her lap. We also had to take an airport connector train to another terminal. Of course, the airport personnel didn't know how to get a wheelchair up to the train platform. The elevator was well hidden and we got erroneous directions three times. When we finally got to the elevator it didn't say which level the train was on, so, of course, we chose the wrong one. We had to wait for the elevator to return to our floor to take it to the train level.

At O'Hare you have to leave the secured area to get your connection at another terminal. But since we had a wheelchair we could go through a short line — if we could find it. Again, airport personnel were clueless. Amazingly, we got to the gate only 5 minutes late but luckily this flight was late too. There were mechanical problems with the plane. It seems that the baggage handler had run his tractor into the side of the fuselage. The NTSB was called to determine if the plane was safe to fly.

After about 2 1/2 hours it was deemed unsafe and the flight was canceled.

We were given a phone number to rebook a flight, and vouchers for hotel accommodations. After frantic attempts to rebook (there were 200 others trying to rebook at the same time) we got our new flight in the morning and our voucher. We were given terrible directions by the airline staff as to where to catch the hotel shuttle. After wasting about 20 minutes waiting at the curb, as is customary at most airports, we found a seasoned traveler who pointed to the shuttle terminal. It was about 2 blocks down and across six lanes of scurrying taxis, limos, rental car shuttles, and impatient citizens picking up and dropping off passengers.

By this time it was 11:15 p.m. The shuttles shut down at 11. I went across to a hotel to call for a taxi. By the time we paid $50 for taxi fare and got to the hotel it was almost 1:30 a.m. We had to catch the hotel shuttle back to the airport at 6 a.m.

The next morning (same morning) after only 3 1/2 hours of sleep and no time for a shower, we went back to O'Hare to go back through security (the third time at this airport) and international check in (the second time). The clerk casually mentioned that Laura's Green Card had expired. We were surprised but they said we could go on to London anyway.

Our overseas flight was a little late and we finally left at about 10:30 a.m. This leg went surprisingly smoothly, but with a 7 1/2 hour flight time and 7 hours time difference this got us to Heathrow Airport at about 1 a.m. next morning, London time. By the time we got through Customs, it was 2 a.m. We thought this would be too early to go to Laura's mom's flat. (Did I mention that Laura's mom had a rebound and was now out of the hospital and at home?)

We were exhausted so we hired a taxi to help us find a hotel. There must have been a convention because all rooms at three hotels were booked, save the executive suite at one hotel for L250 (that's about $450). In desperation, we called Mom regardless of the time and she said it was OK to come at this wee hour. The taxi driver was still with us and he said he'd reduce the fare to East London by the amount we had already spent looking for a hotel, about $25. When we arrived at Mom's flat it cost only L90 after the reduction. That's about $165, plus tip! Two full days and we had only just arrived!

We could have taken the Underground (subway) from Heathrow to about two blocks from the flat but we were exhausted.

And besides, have you ever tried to negotiate subway stations that were built over 100 years ago pushing a wheelchair, carrying two suitcases, coats and miscellaneous other items? Yes, the stations have lifts (elevators) but they were retrofitted in hideaways often two blocks from the tracks. And we would have had to transfer at Hammersmith (a huge station that serves three lines) and at White Chapel (of Jack the Ripper fame). Since trains run only every 30 or 40 minutes at that time of night it might have taken 2 or 3 hours.

Laura's mom's flat is a tiny, one bedroom. That's OK if it has a sofabed, but of course it doesn't. In fact, there is barely enough room to scuffle through because mom is a true packrat. Not only that but she has a dog that is not quite house trained, even when mom is able to take it out. She also has two cats. Mom has a government-paid person to come in for two hours a day to wash dishes, help mom dress and run errands such as grocery shopping. The helper, however, has no time to vacuum, even if the vacuum would fit in the narrow footpaths that wend through the flat. Neither can the helper deodorize nor properly clean up the dog poop nor the cat box. Consequently the place reeks.

Laura tried to sleep on the couch and I on the floor with only a thin blanket between me and the dog stains. The next day (actually later the same day) I tried to clean up the flat — with mom fighting me every step of the way. She was sure I'd throw away the medicine that I found behind the sofa and that had expired two years ago.

She was also terribly upset that I began to clear out her closets so she could get the two sets of clothes that she actually wears off the doorknob. I don't think she ever forgave me for throwing out those 3-inch-high heels (43 pair). Let me say that it takes her 5 minutes to shuffle to the bathroom — high heels of any height are out of the question. She also hated that I threw out those high fashion dresses that she had collected. Who cares that Clara Bow and Jackie Kennedy would no longer call them fashionable. And 25 fancy opera purses. The last time she went to the opera was 1965.

We had tried to donate the stuff but the Goodwill equivalent in London does not do house collections. The nearest Charity Shop was too far to tote the piles of old, dusty, stained clothing. I had learned by the trip from the airport that a taxi was out of the question. After I had filled up the trash room at her building I was exhausted. I didn't even attempt to do anything about the truckload of boxes she had stored in the apartment block's storeroom.

The next day I "volunteered" to take mom in the wheelchair to the High Street (shopping district) to have her hair and nails done and go to the bank to cash her meager pension check. On the way back she asked to stop at a liquor store to buy some Scotch. When we got back to the flat I put the new bottle with the other 20 bottles of booze, some with dust an inch thick.

The last time any of mom's friends dared to brave the stench and come for entertainment must have been 1995. And mom doesn't drink any longer.

After a couple more nights of not being able to sleep, Laura and I decided we had to find a Bed and Breakfast if we were to maintain what sanity we had left. Mom said she had seen a sign "Rooms by the Day" so I investigated it. After 3 hours I discovered that that place was closed and up for sale. I asked several bystanders and a pub owner if they knew of any B&B's nearby. The pub owner suggested another pub with a few rooms above it along the same bus line I had taken. I hopped the bus and arrived a few minutes later at "The George" (all pubs in England seem to be named after royalty). The room was small and shared a bath with only two other rooms and was clean. A PALACE! I took it at only 45 Pounds a night ($80). In London, that's a real bargain! A bonus was that the pub owner was a cabby during the day and promised me a good price getting back to the airport when it was time.

The George was only one bus ride and 10 minutes back to mom's flat so I had another day of trying to help the unhelpable, and one day of relative rest before our scheduled return to the U.S.

True to his word, the puber/cabby gave us a bargain back to Heathrow-only $130!

When we encountered no problems getting on the plane back to Chicago we thought our tribulations were over. Silly us! We landed in Chicago close to on time. While we were waiting to deplane in Chicago I decided to call home and tell our daughter we were on our way. But my cell phone was gone! We searched all around our seat, but no luck. It must be somewhere in Heathrow Airport never to be seen again except by a terrorist looking for an untraceable phone.

Our first stop off the plane was, of course, Customs. Remember that expired Green Card? You guessed it! We were pulled out of line and had to go to the room where they put the 9/11 suspects. We waited and waited as our connecting departure time approached. The INS agents were carrying on in personal conversations and ignoring us. My temper rose and rose to the point I was making loud comments at the walls.

Finally, they led us into the interrogation room and asked us a few questions. I suppose we convinced them we were not going to hijack a plane and fly it into the Sears Tower. They scolded us for letting Laura's Green Card expire and sent us on our way. This left about seven minutes to catch our plane. I ran through O'Hare pushing Laura and shouting, "Look out! Get out of my way!" We almost ran over a mother and two small kids who were not fast enough.

Normally, they load people who need assistance first. Needless to say, when we arrived at our gate they were just about to seal the plane for flight. We held up the flight while they recalled the baggage crew to load the wheelchair below deck and while Laura tripped and stumbled her way to the last row of seats. We settled in, thinking the end is near. No, not that "end" — a good end, we hoped.

We landed at DIA a little early. Since I had lost my phone we found a pay phone to call our daughter to find out at which door to meet her. She didn't answer! I left a message telling her which door we were near and that I had lost the phone.

She needed to call me at the pay phone. No response. It turned out that our daughter and I had a misunderstanding as to which day we were arriving. When she checked her messages she did call the pay phone but when we didn't answer she jumped into the car and raced to the airport to meet us at the door I had indicated.

Why didn't I answer? Well, after waiting about a half-hour we decided to take a cab. We must have passed our daughter on Peña Boulevard. I know everyone complains about the cab fare from DIA, but we were desperately willing to spend under a hundred dollars just to be able to be home safe and sound — more or less. So, next time you encounter travel problems, cheer up — things could be worse, and likely will be.

Tahiti, here we . . . come?

By Linda Gibbons

Back in the early '80s my then-boyfriend booked a surprise dream vacation to Tahiti for the two of us. We were scheduled to leave Stapleton airport for San Francisco and then on to Tahiti for an overnight flight.

We got to the Denver airport in the middle of one of those March blizzards and to our dismay learned not only was our flight canceled, but all flights out of Denver had just been canceled. After spending an uncomfortable night on the floor of the airport we managed to get a flight out the next day and then went on to Tahiti.

We were disappointed to have missed one day of our seven-day vacation, but were looking forward to the rest of it. Soon after arrival at the Club Med, the staff kept talking about the "typhoon" coming toward us on Moorea. Within a couple of days the typhoon hit our island, and even though we didn't get the brunt of the storm on our side, it was enough to keep us inside most of the time.

During a brief lull in the storm, we decided to rent a moped and explore the island. When we got to the far side of the island the moped broke down. I hitch-hiked back to town to get help while my boyfriend kept the local kids from stealing the moped. The rental company sent someone in a pickup truck to get the moped, but he made my boyfriend ride in the back with the moped just as the skies opened up and the downpour started again.

The morning we left Moorea it was at last bright and beautiful. As we were having a drink in the L.A. airport lounge waiting for our flight back to Denver, we figured if we could make it through that experience we could make it through about anything. A couple of years later we got married and have been happily married ever since.

Truly terrible travel tales

By Robert Byrne

Checking out of a hotel in Franfurt, Germany, my wife and I agreed that she should wait curbside with the suitcases while I fetched our rented car from a garage two blocks away. Once in the car, I discovered that there was no way to drive from the garage to the hotel. One-way streets were laid out in such a way that my wife would have to wait at the curb forever. After a half-hour of fruitless circling, I finally sensed success. I was in the left-hand lane on a one-way street and I could see the hotel a couple of blocks away on the same side. As I approached, however, a row of steel posts in the pavement channeled me away from the curb lane into the middle lane and then forced me and all the other cars to turn right and down into a tunnel. A German traffic engineer, apparently for sport, had dangled a prize, then snatched it away.

Cindy told me later that she began to wonder if I had been crushed by a truck or murdered by skinheads. She wondered what she would have to do to get my body shipped back to the United States. She didn't think I had met a woman at the garage and decided to run off because in the luggage she was guarding were my clothes, my plane ticket and my toiletries.

The tunnel curved right and left and emerged in a completely different part of town. I considered stopping and asking a pedestrian for directions, but would I be able to follow directions given in German? I saw a parked taxicab and pulled up behind it. A combination of gestures on my part, the few English words the driver knew, and the name of the hotel scribbled on a piece paper were enough to make him understand that I wanted him to lead me to my wife, which he did. I gave him a big tip because she was watching.

On another occasion, trying to get out of Florence, Italy, we found ourselves in a slow-moving line of cars. Rounding a corner, we saw that the cars were feeding into a multi-story parking structure. To avoid that fate, I turned into an alley. Several cars followed on the assumption that I knew what I was doing. The alley ended at an outdoor street fare. Temporary stalls and booths lined the sidewalks and the pavement itself was covered with displays of crafts, artworks, baskets, blankets, jams and jellies and I don't know what all. What I did know was that I couldn't back up because of the cars behind me. I had to turn onto the street and force the vendors to clear a path for the parade of cars I was leading. Everybody was shaking their fists and yelling and cursing at us the way they did at Mussolini's corpse after WWII. In the countryside an hour later, I was still drenched in sweat.

Look out above!

By Art Nieto

About 12 years ago we took our 7- and 10-year-olds to Costa Rica. We had been enjoying a lovely day in the jungle on horseback observing monkeys and caymans up close when the horse our 7-year old was riding went under a low-hanging tree branch and she did't know to duck. We rushed to pick her up off the ground and immediately discovered her two front teeth protruding from her little mouth. We careened across a pasture to get back to our bus and find help. Needless to say, the Costa Rican jungle didn't yield handy dental support.

After what seemed an interminable and desperate period of searching, we found a dentist of sorts whose repertoire was limited to extracting teeth. Seeing very little choice, we OK'd the extraction of our precious daughter's newly grown adult teeth. Needless to say, we cut short the remainder of the trip — no small feat getting back to the capital, booking a flight on short notice. When we finally made our way home and to a full service dentist, we learned that we could have put the teeth in milk and have saved them if we had been closer to a city-type dental practice. Fortunately, implant technology has gotten pretty well figured out and here ten or so years later, she's got a beautiful smile and no one is the wiser.

Beach story

By Maggie Dee

When we were living in Dallas, we decided to take our three kids on a camping trip to Padre Island off of the Gulf of Mexico. We rented one of those pop-up trailers for sleeping, attached it to our car and off we went. We packed ice chests full of food and soft drinks, grabbed bathing suits and away we went.

We found a spot on the beach to park our "home away from home" tent, set it up, settled arguments as to who was sleeping where, changed into bathing suits and hit the beach to play. When we got hungry we made sandwiches and drank our ice cold sodas. My husband decided to open a can of peaches to snack on while we watched the kids cavorting in the water. I collapsed into giggles when I saw him pouring out the peaches into a bowl. There was actually sand swimming around in the juices! The wind is a constant on the beach but we didn't realize it would cause the white sand to penetrate the can. Being novices at this camping on the beach thing, we had unknowingly parked the trailer facing the wrong direction, so sand turned up in everything and everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. We had sand in places where you don't want sand to ever be, if you get my meaning.

The next morning, we couldn't wait to get back in the water and spend the day sunbathing, napping in a beach chair, reading and just totally enjoying our time together as a family. But by evening we all started complaining of feeling the heat a bit too much and I noticed that we were all getting a tad too much sun. The kids were tanning beautifully, but my husband was getting way too red. I had always tanned well during the summer so I wasn't overly concerned about myself. I usually wore a one-piece suit when sunbathing, but I had bought a new two piece suit especially for the trip not realizing that the exposed flesh around my middle would not tan but would actually burn. I developed large sun blisters and had to avoid the water and sun. Thus we had two strikes already — sand in our food and sun blisters. But we figured nothing else could go wrong, right? Wrong!

I was lying in the shade of our tent when the kids came running back to me from the water's edge laughing so hard they had tears running down their faces. It seems they were playing with a surfboard in the water and the tip of the board accidentally hit my husband in the chin, thereby knocking his partial plate with two front teeth out of his mouth. Looking down the beach, there was my better half strolling up and down the water's edge with his head down and occasionally reaching down to the sand, then straightening up and continuing his stroll. I soon realized he was looking for his teeth!

The sand was littered with shells of all shapes and sizes and the small ones resembled teeth, so he was checking out as many as he could. Trying to hold back our giggles, we all went to help but after a couple of hours we had to admit defeat and headed back to our "home." We were exhausted, sunburned and ready to call it a day. Climbing into our bunks for the night, there were bits and pieces of conversations going something like this: "I'm so tired my fingernails hurt," "It hurts to blink" and my personal favorite, "I think my teeth are sunburned." Of course this last one was uttered by all but my toothless husband. After a brief family conference, we unanimously decided to break camp and head home the following morning so we could recuperate from our vacation. I had to spend the entire trip home with my blistered back resting on a soft pillow, the kids fussed at each other if they so much as touched, and my husband didn't talk much — missing teeth, you know.

As soon as I got inside the house, I called his dentist to report what had happened to his teeth. When the receptionist stopped laughing, I was told to get him into the office so they could arrange to have another plate made for him. Naturally a few jokes were born out of this experience. Things like, "There's a shark out there with one hell of a smile!"

In spite of what went wrong with our trip, so much went right. The ocean was awesome, the sunsets breathtaking and the togetherness of our family priceless. Would I ever camp out on the beach again? You bet I would. But thinking back, I think I saw a Holiday Inn sign just down from our camping spot. . . .

Blown away

By Jim Sidebottom

We had a great vacation go really bad a couple of years ago in Cozumel.

My wife's family gets together for a trip every other year, and two years ago we all went to Cozumel. There were 17 of us, ranging in age from 18 months to 80. The first few days were wonderful. It was an all inclusive resort, so we ate, drank beer, some went SCUBA diving, others went shopping, sightseeing or just laid on the beach. We noticed that there was a tropical storm brewing called Wilma, but it was not forecast to come our way, so we were not concerned.

But as the week passed the tropical storm turned into a hurricane, still wandering around the Caribbean with no clear course indicated. But as it grew in strength, it headed more and more for Cozumel. By the time it was clear that a potential category 5 hurricane was headed for the island, there was no longer any way off the island. So the resort, fortunately a concrete building, started preparations for us weathering the storm. They established three shelters in the building. Our entire group was assigned to the normal employee's cafeteria, a ground level room roughly 15 feet by 30 feet. We were required to be in the shelter by 6 p.m. on Wednesday evening in preparation.

They had put foam pads on the floor with sheets for sleeping and there were a few plastic chairs and tables to sit on. We played cards, read etc. until the storm really hit, about midnight. That was when the electricity went off. So for the next 30 hours or so I huddled with 16 of my in-laws mostly in the dark. We were at ground level and a hole in the wall allowed water to flood into the room the first night, ensuring that most of the bedding was too wet to sleep on or even lay on. The restrooms were about 50 feet down a now dark hallway, which was also water covered since there was a cargo loading area that was open to the outside. We listened to the wind blow, the tiles blowing off the roof and shattering as they hit the ground, and wishing we had more flashlights and batteries.

Finally the wind started to diminish and we ventured upstairs to assess the damage. Most of the roof tiles were gone, some windows were blown out, a building next to the hotel lost its roof and suffered major damage. All the trees had been stripped of leaves in the surrounding jungle. A bus and other vehicles were severely damaged. A pier used by the dive boats was gone, as was all the sand on the now rocky beach. There was no electricity or water. The road to town was washed out in several places. There was severe damage everywhere from the category 5 hurricane Wilma.

Luckily the resort had a generator, which had drowned out in the wind driven rain, that was restarted, so there was some electricity. And they had some limited water in a storage tank. They had managed to feed us sandwiches as best they could during the storm, and they continued to feed the residents what they could. The airport was closed, so there were no flights in or out.

Finally, after a few of days waiting, people started looking for ways out. Many were taking the ferry to the Riviera Maya and trying to go to one of the 2 regional airports. The resort was running out of food, water and diesel fuel for the generator. We finally decided that was our best out.

So finally Tuesday morning we started walking towards town on the remaining parts of the washed out main beach road, dragging all of our luggage through the sand. We were lucky enough to run into a van-taxi dropping of a customer who agreed to take us, in two trips, to the ferry landing. There we waited with hundreds of others for the ferry, now free as the Mexican government tried to facilitate an evacuation of the island. We managed to reach the Rivera Maya and negotiated an exorbitant price for two van-taxis to take us to the main regional airport at Merida, about 100 miles away and directly west of Cancun which had also been severely damaged by the hurricane.

Being lucky enough to have international cell access, one of our party started attempting to reach an uncle in the air charter business. Finally we were able to charter a Gulfstream large enough to take all 17 of us out. At the main airport terminal were hundreds of refugees trying to get out, mostly from Cancun. We met the airplane at the airport, and were never so glad to see an airplane taxi in. After a flight to Houston's Hobby Airport, and a van ride to Bush International, we set out to try to return to our various homes. But all the flights for the day to our desired destinations had departed, so we were booked on flights the next morning. However, the World Series was in town, and there were no hotel rooms to be had. After a while, we found "comfortable" places to sleep on the floor, baggage carousels or wherever. Finally the next morning about 7 o'clock we were on a flight for Denver. DIA never looked so good as when we landed.

So it was quite an adventure. But no one was injured, and although really tired we all survived to travel again another day.

Jeep thrills

By Lee Netzler

After a three-day delay in Beaumont, Texas, to stay clear of Hurricane Georges, we were on the road again. My dog "Rusty" and I were driving from Denver to Sanibel Island off western Florida for three weeks vacation at an ocean cottage. We had stopped en route because the uncertain path of the hurricane prevented us from driving along the gulf coast to Florida.

We were already two days late for our reservation and were detouring north through Memphis to avoid the storm. When we reached Memphis late in the day, I unloaded only what I needed, leaving hunting gear, gifts for relatives and other items in the Jeep.

My plan was to rise and depart early so that would reduce loading time in the morning.

At 2:30 a.m., I heard a loud engine noise outside. Could that be my Jeep?! I pulled on trousers, stepped outside and saw my Jeep speeding away. Broken glass lay in the empty parking space in front of me where the Jeep had been parked. My dog and I were suddenly stranded in Memphis, not knowing a soul, and our vehicle and most of our portable possessions were stolen.

I filed a telephone police report and was told to wait 72 hours since most vehicles are found by then. It wasn't found, so I rented a car to finish driving to Florida, then return to Memphis if they found the Jeep, or back to Denver if they didn't. I arrived at the Florida cottage six days late, completely stressed out and unable to relax for weeks to come.

With the Jeep still missing, I cancelled a planned drive to Wisconsin after Sanibel and drove back to Denver. I began shopping for another vehicle, but needed to wait until 30 days elapsed before the insurance company would declare the Jeep "lost" and pay for it.

They eventually found my Jeep-empty, stripped and damaged-after 29 days. Faced with the prospect of trying to have major repairs done in Memphis, spending three days flying to Memphis to drive it back to Colorado, and considering costs of the airline ticket, meals and lodging, it was a losing situation. Luckily the insurance company eventually declared it a total loss and wrote a check for the estimated value.

All I can say is that hugging your Scottish Terrier during the darkest hour in Memphis is priceless.

Hawaii beckons — not!

By Fred Dorr

After having had a wonderful honeymoon in Maui and Oahu, we returned a couple years later for the Thanksgiving holidays to Poipu Beach on the island of Kauai when hurricane Iwa hit. Luckily we missed the evacuation of the resort and had to take our rental car to the Red Cross shelter.

We spent our wonderful romantic vacation sleeping on the floor and dining on Red Cross food with about 500 other people while the eye of the hurricane passed above us. The next day the roof of our condo unit was missing, most cars at the resort were submerged in the parking lots or strewn about roads and downed power lines blocked the highways. But, because we had our rental car, we reached the airport via the roads through the sugar cane plantations. The loss of all power on the island limited flights to daylight hours.

Chaos at the airport prevailed as vacationers continued to arrive and promptly wanted to leave, however we were fortunate when a gate agent motioned to us and we were last to board a flight which was one of the last to leave for the day. I should mention that I had suffered an injury while attempting to return to our condo, however the Red Cross provided transport (lying in the bed of a pickup) to a first aid station and provided medical aid. Throughout this period the assistance the Red Cross and doctors provided was first rate and they should be commended for their efforts.

Since that vacation had gone completely awry we decided to visit Maui the following Memorial Day. Shortly after our 747 lifted off the ground in Dallas the captain informed us that an engine had caught fire on takeoff and we would be dumping fuel while ground personnel prepared for an emergency landing. We looked at each other and agreed that maybe Hawaii was just not meant for us.

Later that year we were sitting poolside in Ixtapa when we noticed the hotel staff taping the windows. Being familiar with Boulder winds we inquired as to the purpose of the taping. Upon being informed of an approaching typhoon we packed and left the same day.

We came to the conclusion the Pacific did not want us.

Shoulda stayed home

By Bobbie Saunders

In July 2006, my vacation nightmares began with the near disaster of a woman above me on the "up" escalator at DIA falling backwards. I was able to steady her luggage as people below somehow kept her vertical.

In Atlanta, I had to deal with a surly cab driver who said senior fare was only for locals. At the conference I attended my friend contracted chickenpox and was extremely ill.

In Virginia, I rammed my back into the concrete steps of a pool. Leaving there, I listened to a screaming toddler on the airplane for the entire trip. With relatives, we went to a restaurant and were enjoying the meal when a busboy broke a plate right near the table, crockery flying everywhere. The next day with my cousin's wife on the highway I realized I had left my purse in the ice cream parlor. Racing back, I found it still sitting there, being guarded by a young couple.

I had noisy rooms in four out of four hotels. At the last hotel in Cincinnati, I encountered fumes in the hallway from carpet installation. The next day when I came back from breakfast ready to check out, I found a workman tearing out carpet right in front of my room!

Living/camping on the edge

By Susan Permut

When I was about 12, my family (Mom, Dad, brother and me) decided to go on a camping holiday. We borrowed equipment from a neighbor and set off in our 1946 London taxi for Dorset, known as the driest county in England.

By the time we got there we were all tired and cranky. It was so foggy that we didn't even bother to eat dinner. We just found a place to pitch our tent, crawled inside and went to sleep. When we woke up, we found we had parked and camped on the edge of a cliff which plunged down several hundred feet into the ocean. Luckily, the fog had lifted so we could see the danger.

We moved the tent, but it rained for six days and nights and we almost floated away on our air mattresses. We managed to had a good time in spite of the rain, telling stories and playing word games in the tent and going down to the beach during short breaks in the weather. We laughed a lot but we never went camping again.

From bliss to remiss

By David Bacon

Around mid-May, an old high school crony and I left our old stomping grounds in the East Bay of the Golden Gate and headed south toward Mexico and Central America. Our goals was to drive to Panama, and we had three months at our disposal. For weeks we researched the history, economy and society of each country we'd enjoy; and brushed up on travel advisories and horror stories, while we customized our old Chevy truck for secure and rugged travel.

Our blissful descent began in the western Mexican coast where in Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, and other lesser- known paradises, we pillaged palm-laden resorts and talcum powder beaches. Our leisurely ways took us south to sample huge, colorful festivals, bullfights and remote jungles. We trekked through great temples of Mayan antiquity, gathered amongst remote indigenous tribes, and savored the simple smiling lives of poverty.

We lost each other in massive bustling marketplaces and nursed our climbing wounds lava-side beside a perpetually active volcano in Guatemala, which, like most meso-American countries, is historically plagued by countless years of government oppression and social injustice.

We moved on to scuba dive Honduran and Belizian-style for nine days of Caribbean island and underwater pleasure. Nicaragua brought us more tired, beautiful Third World eyes and crashing monsoons that flooded the lush countryside. South into Costa Rica, we immersed ourselves in vast jungles and cloud forests and found our demise after driving over 7,500 miles, where we sunk our Chevy truck in an estuary of the Pacific Ocean. We scrambled to salvage our gear in dangerous tides, the truck was a disastrous loss in the accident, and we were left nearly destitute in a remote and dangerous region of the country. In an instant, our trip was not just over, but crushed mightily with a striking accident and clash with nature that ironically was with the mighty Pacific Ocean that we enjoyed so much along the way and by the loss of the very vehicle that catalyzed our introduction to so many remote regions.

I learned a lot that summer in a wonderful part of the world, that is so close to home; and never in my global travels had so much bliss been toppled and ripped away in such dramatic fashion.

A night in the Everglades

By Marian Pilaar

In August of 1986 in our pop-up camper we traveled to the Everglades. Looking around we wondered why there were no campers in the campground save for one lone RV.

The first clue was when my husband saw an animal running to a tree and he got out of the van to see what kind it was and came running back with a swarm of mosquitoes at his heels. "Dad, maybe we shouldn't stay here," my daughter said, to which my husband confidently replied, "Oh, we'll be all right in the camper."

Well, that night the mosquitoes buzzed at the screens all night long, "let us in, let us in," they buzzed and of course they got in, we hardly slept! The next morning my face was all puffed and red from bites, my son and daughter had about 67 bites (they counted them) on their arms and legs. Of course my husband had very few — must have been his scent? As I was washing my face in the restroom up pops a frog out of the drain. Oh, this was like something out of a horror novel. We left in a hurry vowing never again to spend a night in the Everglades in the summertime.

Bowling for trouble

By Cherry Emerson

I talked my friend into going to a bowling tournament for women in Reno, we live in Boulder, on the cheap during the first week of July in 2006. The middle of a heat wave and high gas prices. Although we are in our 60s and 40s we are the adventurous types, so we decided to camp all of the eight days except two days in Reno where we had the cheap hotel package. We crammed two tents, all our gear, suitcases, her guitar, my bowling balls and large cooler (couldn't afford to eat in restaurants except once a day) into my Golf 1.8 2000 turbo and started out, we had scouted out all the campgrounds on the internet, the first one was a disaster, Flaming Gorge in Wyoming. It was no facilities, find a spot in the sand, next to a mosquito-ridden lake, and us the only people there. Temp? Glad you asked, 110 degrees at 2 p.m. Even the antelope who were bedded down about 100 yards away didn't get up. We bailed, and went to Salt Lake City, that campground was OK, if you count out constant semi-trucks braking on the hill about 50 feet from our site. Problems with next campground too and the Reno reservations but that is another story.

On the way back from the ill-fated Reno trip (one disasterous campground after another thanks to our pre-trip internet planning), we decided to return home on the "scenic route" straight through Nevada, U.S. 50, also known as the "Loneliest road in America," salt flats, desert, mirages, the works. We of course chose to cross it in the middle the day, and in early July, our VW Golf packed to the limit with gear, I even told my friend she couldn't get a free stuffed lion because there wasn't room but she did, so every time it was my turn to drive, she had to hold it on her lap because I couldn't see over it if it was in the back seat. We tried to make the best of it since we are interested in "the sites," we stopped to look at petroglyphs hiking about one-half mile at 2 p.m., when we got back to the car our clothes smelled like when you scorch them with an iron, even the lizards wouldn't move, you could photograph them 4 inches away, which we did, after sitting in the car for about 20 minutes with air conditioning and sucking down liquids we headed on, and of course, our "emergency back-up" of cell phones had no signal.

My friend, and I finally limp into Austin, Nev., about halfway that has a hotel where rates are cheap, except, it had no vacancy because they were filming "Blueberry Nights" (movie with Jude Law, not out yet), and No, we didn't see Jude Law, but did play Texas Holdem' in the basement with some locals, about a $50 lesson in bad raising in a half-hour. We had to push forward and slept in a free campground we happened to find in the mountains east of Austin. We struggled forward the next day to Beaver, Utah, and got in too late to go anywhere else. We had chose the campground on the Internet, it was a KOA, boasted great amenities, including water garden complete with flowers and all campsites with nice grassy lawns. We find that the internet site was 5 years old, the campground had been practically abandoned and bought by a woman whose husband has back problems so no upkeep either. No water garden, no grass, only on shower worked, mosquito-ridden, dead trees and bushes and picnic tables that were too dangerously constructed to use, and forget about the "wireless Internet feature," we expressed gratitude for the one working toilet. Decided to treat ourselves to dinner, got recommendation from stressed-out woman owner, worst Chinese food we ever had, made several by flashlight trips to the one working bathroom during the night. Bailed out the next morning continued east on I-70 turning off to go to Moab, Utah. As we passed the turnoff for Dead Horse Point an idea of a "Thelma and Louise" exit did cross our minds after an insane eight days on the road, but our brains had cooled and more rational though prevailed, we passed the turn and continued on to Moab, Utah. It was like the gods rewarded us for not ending it all. We spent two great nights in a high-quality campground and took an all-day trip river rafting down the Colorado River. We then made a bee-line for the Colorado border and home and we vowed never to chose campgrounds off the internet again and not to cross deserts in the heat of the day. And, yes, we are still friends and were still speaking.

Cruising for a bruising

By Leslie Simpson

In 1998, my girlfriend and I went on a Carribean cruise. We were supposed to go to Cozumel, Grand Cayman and Jamaica.

The weeklong cruise consisted of rain every day (with high humidity), choppy seas, walking like drunken sailors (because of rough seas), no trip into Grand Cayman (because of rough seas), missing the captain's dinner (due to rough seas) and not feeling well enough to eat (filet mignon, my favorite food in the world), sea sickness, food poisoning (due to eating undercooked meat), no Immodium to save a person's life (not a one on the ship), high spa bills (because there was nothing else to do, since there was so much rain), three hours of sunshine (as we were returning to port in Florida at the end of the cruise) and to top it all off, my girlfriend "knifing" her suitcase which was permently locked and finally just leaving it in the room, totalled. Seems like Hurrican Mitch had circled around for one more go before it dissipated.

Quite the adventure for our first cruise!!!

Up the creek in Cripple Creek

By J.L. Heimbuck

The Double Eagle had just opened in Cripple Creek, so without reservations, we packed our bags and headed up the mountain.

We thought we were lucky to get a room. Well, that night I tripped on a large rock, fell and fractured my nose, bending my new trifocal glasses in the process, not to mention tearing my shorts, scrapping my knees, hands and elbows. Bloody, we went to the hotel and were greeted by the security guard who gave my husband the once-over. I can only imagine what he was thinking.

He escorted us through the casino, eyes staring suspiciously, and up to our room. He would not leave until I assured him my husband had not laid a hand on me.

The next day, with two black eyes and a swollen nose, I tried to bend my glasses back into shape enough to wear so I could see something! We checked out and valet said they would put our luggage in our car while we ate breakfast. We later got our car, but checked the trunk. NO LUGGAGE! Remember, I'm in pain! After searching, the valets remembered another car into which they had placed luggage, but, of course, that car was gone. We had no choice but to come back to Denver minus luggage.

Upon our arrival at home, we were informed the honest people who had our luggage returned to the Double Eagle, switched our luggage for their own. I have no idea where their luggage was this whole time. Because we were not going to drive all the way back to Cripple Creek, an employee brought our possessions to Denver, meeting us at a McDonald's to make the delivery. Need I say, we have not been back to Cripple Creek — too many bad memories!

There's no place like (motor) home

By Ellen Gardner

Having had great memories of traveling with my parents in their motorhome, I was excited when they let my husband, son and I borrow the camper for a trip to the Black Hills. We knew the heater wasn't working, but didn't think that would be a problem in July. We were wrong! No matter how many blankets we piled on ourselves, we were still cold to the bone. But heat wasn't a problem for the camper when it was running. The engine overheated at every stop sign, so we had to roll right through them, or else turn the engine off and wait for traffic.

But as temperamental as the motorhome was, it was nothing compared to our 2-year-old. He was expressing his growing indepedence: mostly in ear-piercing shrieks! The only things he wanted to do were go up and down stairs and in and out of bathroom doors. We got the grand tour of every stinky, vermin-infested outhouse in the hills!

The climax came the last evening when we decided to have a nice restaurant meal in Rapid City. The kid was throwing fits and bouncing off the walls, so in deference to the other diners we left without even ordering. We no sooner got back into the camper when the clouds burst open and the parking lot quickly turned into a river. Then came the hail! We were laughing by the the time the snow plows started piling it into three-foot high mounds along the road. Our campground had been a mud-hole before the rain, so we just sucked up the loss and camped at a nice warm room in the Quality Inn.

We left the next day, thanking God we could drop the kid off at daycare and go back to work!

A cruise to forget

By Nina Davidson

My husband and I took many cruises, but one is never to be forgotten.

We had to take a charter flight from Miami to South America to reach our embarkation point. The aircraft was about 5 hours late for departure. The flight took 12 hours. We sat in cramped spaces and with hardly any air conditioning. No refreshments were served during the flight.

We boarded the ship and found our luggage in our cabin. Our luggage had suffered damage in transit. The cabin was tiny and dirty, and without running water in the shower. Towels were hanging on a hard-to-reach rack over the toilet. We ended up "bathing" at night in the swimming pool.

We noticed a lady in the lobby who was reclining with a blanket and a pillow. She had complained about fumes in her cabin. She eventually got an "upgrade."

We toured the city during our first stop. We had to be very careful not to step off the curb because the gutters were filled with excrement.

Sleeping at night was impossible. There was so much noise. The noise came from elevator cables swinging back and forth. On the ship, I found a small station where a steward served tea and coffee. That same steward also cleaned toilets, barehanded. On the last day of the cruise, our toilet exploded. Everything in the bathroom had to be hosed down.

Finally, during the cruise, a large insect bit me. I developed pain and swelling, and had to see a doctor.

I wish I could forget this cruise, but I never will.

Elbows and ankles

By Roxanne Prescott

It was supposed to be two weeks in paradise. A house overlooking the Atlantic Ocean on an out-island of the Bahamas. Elbow Cay was the setting for a destination wedding we were attending. The first week went by without a glitch. On day 10 I arose before dawn and was sitting on the edge of the bed when a "creature" came into the room, ran between my legs and under the bed.

OMG! I yelled, waking my husband, who told me not to worry, it was probably the lizard we had seen earlier. So, I lay back down and gazed out the glass door towards the ocean. Just then, the "creature" ran past the door and I realized it was not a lizard, but a HUGE RAT! We spent the next two days trying to get rid of it, unsuccessfully.

Day 12 — 10:30 p.m. — heading out on the deck to gaze at the moon over the Atlantic I missed a step and fell. I reached down to my left foot and realized things were not right. I had fractured my ankle. After several attempts by my husband to reach emergency personnel via radio, a group of volunteers from the Hopetown Fire and Rescue arrived on scene, splint my ankle and arranged for transport. I traveled in the bed of a pick up truck to the dock. Ferry boat to a small clinic in Marsh Harbour. I was then airlifted to Doctor's Hospital in Nassau where a surgeon set the foot, cast it, sent us to the airport and back to the states.

Boy! was I glad to get back on American soil. It wasn't exactly the ending we had planned for a dream vacation, but it could have been worse and we did have 12 beautiful days in paradise!! I also can't give enough praise to the volunteer men and women of the Hopetown F&R.

Would we go back you ask? You bet. But next time I'll take out extra travel insurance.

A topless vacation

By Michelle Morris

For the very first vacation I took with my then-boyfriend, now husband, we flew to Martinique in the Caribbean to spend a day before boarding a Windjammer sailboat for a cruise. Our luggage didn't arrive with us and being inexperienced travelers, we had nothing to wear with us in carry-on except the clothes on our backs — blue jeans and heavy sweaters that we had worn from the cold northeast where we lived. Because it was Sunday, everything was closed except a nearby resort hotel gift shop.

After careful consideration we opted for the only bathing suits on sale — for my boyfriend, tiny swim trunks with flags on them that looked like they were for an 8-year-old, and for me, a string bikini bottom, because they didn't sell tops with them! I guess we neglected to read about the topless sunbathing in Martinique but got into the spirit since it was either that or continue to wear the sweater!

We were only there for one night before boarding the ship, but the hotel the travel agent had said "overlooked the water" actually overlooked the freight harbor, and as I opened my makeup bag in the evening a 2-inch, fat cockroach crawled out of it. I washed up and got in bed, but as you can imagine, I didn't sleep a wink.

Ah, Hawaii (airport)!

By David and Lorrie Tyner

Our family of four had a wonderful 12-day vacation in Hawaii two summers ago. The plan was to fly back to Denver and arrive home the morning of our 20th wedding anniversary so we could celebrate. When we boarded the plane in Hawaii the captain informed us that the navigation system was down and we'd have to wait until a new navigation system was flown in from San Francisco and installed.

Our 20th wedding anniversary was spent sleeping on the hard floor of the Hawaii International Airport for 20 hours. Our flight returned to Denver the day after our anniversary. What did the airline give us in return for our delay? A few food vouchers and a $100 credit for a future flight, which, by the way, expired in one year. We never used it.

RV there yet?

By Sally Maughan

Four years ago we were invited to join the family of a friend of our son's to their cabin on a lake in Minnesota for the boys' high graduation vacation. So we rented an RV with another couple to make the long drive. As we were going down I-90 at 80 mph the top of the slide out started to tip out. We pulled over, tried to secure it but no luck. We ended up using the seat belts from the bench across the aisle to attach to the one against the slide out.

Then the RV broke down. It was fourth of July week and about 95 degrees. The rental company sent a tow truck but he would not allow any of us to ride in the RV or with him in his truck. He was going to leave us on the side of the road. When we explained that the male friend with was suffering from heat stroke he then called his girlfriend to give us a ride into Sioux Falls. She drove 90 mph in a construction zone sitting cross-legged with a cigarette in one hand and a phone in the other.

The next day we continued our trip once the RV was fixed. We arrived at our destination without any more incidents and that night as we were sitting by the fire the wind came up quickly and the next thing we know it was a tornado. There were 25 of us in all running for the culvert down the road. Unfortunately, it wasn't as big as the owner of the cabin remembered as a child! We all ran back and crammed into that tiny cabin and waited it out. The next day we heard the town 10 minutes away sustained pretty heavy damage. Several very large trees around the cabin were down.

We were very lucky!

Shoulda left the kids at home

By Lindsay Lamb

We were going on vacation to California, with our two children ages 7 and 5. I was packing, and the kids both said they had a sore throat.

Because they didn't have that ‘Strep Throat' smell, I figured that they had allergies which was something that we dealt with.

We left that night planning on staying in Green River, Utah. We were in the motel, and both of the kids were delirious! They showed no signs until we were in the room. We gave them Tylenol and gave them a cool shower to bring their fever down. That helped until we could get them to the clinic. I'm not sure how Green River is now, but it did not have a hospital at the time.

We were the first ones there in the morning and we were told that they had tonsillitis. The doctor said that the antibiotics that they would take would make them feel better after 24 hours and thought we might be able to go on as they were pretty stable. The problem was that there was not a pharmacy in Green River Utah! On we went to Salinas Utah.

The prescriptions were filled, and we went along on the road. The kids were doing well, and we cautiously kept going. We ended up in Reno and ate at a Pizza Hut. Well when were done, we loaded up into our van, and my daughter was so sick because at that time, chewing the pills made her vomit.

Fortunately, it wasn't much so we kept going.

We made it into California, and decided to take Highway 1. Well we did not realize that it was a very narrow highway and logging trucks were on our rear! We were looking for a motel, and everything was full. We ended up in Ukiah at 9 p.m. We wanted a snack and thought the deli might be a good idea. We told the workers that we took the highway and they said isn't it pretty? We said yes, but the logging trucks were on us the whole way. The owner said in disbelief, "You mean you took Highway 1? I thought you were taking 101!"

We finally found a place to stay. They were cabins. I love cabins and what a great sleep we had. Rich, my husband, was checking out and I told him he might want to take the kids so I could finish packing us up and mentioned that they had a Continental Breakfast if he wanted to save time and pick that up. He thought that was a good idea.

I finished packing and was sitting on the porch of this darling cabin, and Rich came back with the kids my daughter was covered in orange juice. It turned out, that the logging trucks were on the highway and Rich didn't know they had to stop for pedestrians and pushed her out of the way of the truck.

He came back with a half-full glass of orange juice.