What’s the worst travel experience you’ve ever had?

Somewhere around 2004 I traveled to Cancun for the first time with my then boyfriend. He also brought along his mother, sister, and his best friend. (At this time, I had a good relationship with all of these people.)

We were only going to be there for four days, excluding the two days of travel to and fro. The first day was great, as we explored the resort and took a shuttle bus to see some sites and get some facials and pedicures. Dinner that evening was marvelous and the entertainment was top tier.

The second day at breakfast, my BF and his mother got into a random conversation about how people name their children and why they should or should not give them unique sounding names. To be clear, they weren’t talking about names that were not American-sounding. They were talking about made up names that did not have a particular meaning, or named after fruits, days of the week, things like that. Somehow or another, this turned into a huge argument at the table between the two. The rest of us sat there attempting to deflect or change the conversation to no avail. At one point, his sister announced that she was going to spend the day alone and got up from the table. Shortly thereafter, his best friend left as well. This went on for about another 15 minutes before I finally said that I thought we should go upstairs to change and get ready for the beach. We had planned to spend the whole day on the beach just hanging out and relaxing.

The BF and I parted ways with his mother, who shared a room next door to ours with his sister. Once up in the room, he still could not let it go and was so angry over this topic that the two of them disagreed on. We could also hear his mother ranting in the next room to his sister, which did not help the mood.

He sulked and muttered under his breath for the rest of the day, and he and his mother refused to talk to each other. There we were sitting on this beautiful beach, beautiful weather, and all of this angst and anger hanging around in the air.

By dinner time, I think we were all exhausted from trying to act like we were having a good time. At first, it was fairly quiet and we were all having basic dinner table chit chat. And then I don’t remember who started it first, but one of them brought up the stupid argument. It turned into a screaming and yelling match at the table between them, with the sister trying to break it up. Pounding on tables. Crying. It was horrible! I got up from the table and his best friend followed me back up to our rooms. The sister stayed there with them at the table.

In the room, the best friend and I just sat there waiting hesitantly for them all to come back. When they finally did, everyone went to their respective rooms. The rest of the evening, my BF ranted and raved in our room, pacing back and forth. It actually was a little bit scary even.

As I lay there that night in this beautiful hotel room, I couldn’t sleep a wink. All I could do was think and try to figure out how I could just leave in the morning and get back home. But I did not have the money for the plane tickets home.

The days until we left were absolutely miserable. No one was talking. Breakfast was tense. Dinner was tense. We even went into town to a beautiful steakhouse, but no one was talking to each other.

The plane trip home seemed so, so long! I couldn’t wait to get home and in my own space away from these people. Probably needless to say, but the BF and I didn’t last long at all after this. And then I was called “ungrateful.” It was the worst vacation trip I have ever had.

I hope I can go back to Cancun again someday before I get too old, and I hope it is with somebody that is more worried about which drink to choose from on the beach than how anyone names their children.