Spring Break Nightmare - Stranded in Cancun

When I was in my junior year of college, my roommates and I set out for Cancun, Mexico on Spring break. Without doing much shopping around of any sorts, we simply "booked" our trip with a promoter who specialized in Spring Break vacations. The flyers were all over the quad and of course that meant it must have been legit, right? My mother felt otherwise and questioned whether the organization was genuine.

With problems from the start, this unnamed company took our deposits, and then sent us our tickets to Cancun Mexico. After a room mix up, misplaced reservations and neither I nor any of my roommates speaking Spanish, we began to feel duped. The meals included began to suddenly add up as charges to our room.

After an exhausting week of drinking, dancing and very little sleep, my roommates and I headed to the airport which looked as if it had not been cleaned or re-decorated since 1974. That however was not even close to the issue we would encounter.

As I walked up to the woman behind the counter and tried to check in, she told me I was not on the flight. Neither was my roommate or the rest of the students that had booked their trip with this travel agent. There was no flight. The travel agent never booked any of the flights and left hundreds of college kids deserted.

Hearing these words almost caused me to faint. I planned this trip and was adamant with my parents that there would be no problems for now that I was an adult, I could handle anything. Suddenly I did not feel very grown up anymore and headed straight for a pay phone to make a very long distance collect call home.

More than 48 hours later, my roommates and I snuck onto a plane that eventually showed up and happened to be U.S. bound. After handing in a boarding slip of paper that did not have our names on them, we found seats and never said a word. Trembling from panic, we sat wide eyed the entire trip home in disbelief that we had spent the last two days trying to find a way home.

Looking back, there was never a time taking my mother's advice would have been wiser. The Spring Break promoter disappeared shortly after our return to the states and we tried very hard to forget what being trapped in the Mexican airport felt like. By far that was the worst experience of my life and a terrible way to end Spring Break.