In Mexico with No Luggage and No Hotel

Dear Jen and Tom,

I know the honeymoon is supposed to be one of the most magical times in a marriage, but mine made me rethink my whole relationship.

My newly wed husband usually has everything in order so when he offered to plan the honeymoon, I had no concerns. I did suggest that we book through a travel agent, but he assured me that he travels all the time for business and that planning a vacation wouldn't be nearly as difficult. Based off of our honeymoon, it's hard for me to believe he has a job, and only later did I find out that his company makes all his travel arrangements for him.

We were married on the beautiful Coronado Island in front of all of our friends and family. The ceremony along with the reception was beautiful, more than I could have ever imagined. There were elegant flowers decorating the venue, gourmet food, and incredible sounds coming out of the speakers. I thought this night would be a foreshadowing of our honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, but was I ever wrong.

My husband suggested Puerto Vallarta because he studied abroad in Mexico in college and told me that this location would be ideal. He claimed it would be better than Hawaii, but for half the price. It ended up being the exact opposite.

We flew out of San Diego the morning following our wedding and landed in Puerto Vallarta within a few short hours to find ourselves stuck in the midst of a massive thunderstorm. My husband failed to realize that Mexico does have a rainy season, and that our week long honeymoon stay was planned right in the middle of it.

After we landed, wouldn't you have guessed that our luggage got lost? Well it did. I'm not sure how since it was a direct flight, but the airline said it may have just been left at San Diego Airport. This wouldn't have been a big deal except, when the airline asked where we were staying, my husband revealed that he had not yet booked a hotel room!!!!

This immediately infuriated me. I was shocked. How could he have done something so stupid? He claimed that he wasn't sure which hotel he liked best off of the internet pictures so he wanted to see them all before he booked one. Ugh, had he just consulted a travel agent, they could have given up their valuable insight and secured us a room.

We left the airport with no bags and no hotel, but my husband assured me everything would work itself out by the end of the day. Another misleading statement.

When we went to get in a taxi, my husband who prior to this trip claimed to speak Spanish, had some serious communication issues with the taxi driver. The driver didn't understand my husbands horrible Spanish, and my husband didn't understand anything the driver was saying, including the pricing or routes the driver was suggesting for his services. It took us almost an hour to get from the airport to where the oceanfront hotels are located, and mind you by most other online accounts I read the average ride time was 15 to 20 minutes!

When we got down to the beach, I refused to let my husband make any further plans. I wanted to go with distinguished hotel brands that I knew had a good reputation worldwide. But before I could do that, we had to pay the taxi driver who wanted nearly every single dollar we had on us. It was insane how much this driver ripped us off. Good thing my husband's job doesn't involve negotiations.

There I was, running through the pouring rain and thunder into a well known American owned hotel chain, only to find out that due to a huge Mexican sports industry conference and renovations during the slow rainy season, the hotel had no available rooms for the entire duration of our honeymoon. I was horrified. I ran several blocks down to another hotel I had heard of, same story. Apparently my husband failed to do any adequate research, and as a result there we were in Mexico with no luggage, no hotel, and no real way of getting either.

Don't get me wrong, there were some hotels available, but certainly not any I had planned on spending my honeymoon in. So due to my husbands lack of planning, I spent the first night of my honeymoon in a hostel and went straight back to the airport in the morning. They still had no clue where my bag was, so I decided to cut my losses and get the first flight back home. The only problem with that was that a return ticket home was almost triple of what my round trip ticket there was. The combination of the round trip non negotiable ticket and the one way ticket home was far more expensive than round trip airfare to Hawaii. I didn't care though, I'd sell the China set we just got at the wedding if I had to. I needed to get back home.

Needless to say, my husband and I had limited communication during our travel home, but to my relief when I arrived at the front door I found a notification from FedEx letting me know that they had tried to deliver my luggage. Apparently my husband with his “expert Spanish skills” from studying abroad in college misread the lost luggage form and requested that the luggage be sent to our house in California instead of the airport in Puerto Vallarta. I was angry, but at this point I was just relieved to know someone had my personal belongings.

From now on, it's safe to say I'll leave booking arrangements to the professionals.

Sincerely,

Brenda Walters

Paradise at the British Virgin Islands

Dear Jen and Tom,

I just wanted to stop by and drop a line about how wonderful our honeymoon we booked with AskAboutTravel to the British Virgin Islands was.

I'm a 25 year old artist living in New York. Recently I was married to my fiancee of 3 years, a 29 year old TV executive whom I met at charity event for ocean wildlife. Both of us have a deep passion for the exotic wonders of the ocean, but living and working in the Big Apple seriously restricts our access to the things which we treasure.

After we became engaged, we both agreed that our honeymoon would be best spent in a place where we could enjoy the things which first brought us together; the ocean. Since New York is just a hop skip and a jump away from the Bahamas, we wanted a place that was a little more lush and not as common as Nassau. Meanwhile, we also didn't want to lose an entire day of our honeymoon traveling across the country to Hawaii. At this stage in our lives, our careers just wont warrant that kind of time off.

After looking for what seemed like days through all sorts of “do it yourself” trip planners, my wife suggested that we leave the stressful planning to the professionals. We inquired with one of your incredibly helpful staff professionals who after hearing our situation persuaded us to stay within the Caribbean, but just to go a little bit further. We ended up locking down a reservation on the luscious island of St. Thomas, where we lived like royalty amongst some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen.

We booked 5 nights at the Wyndham Sugar Bay Resort & Spa, where the staff and resort accommodations made sure that this honeymoon was an unforgettable experience. Our room had its' own private balcony that looked out over a white sandy beach, backdropped with extravagantly green hillsides; both of which were encompassed by some of the purest water I've ever seen in my entire life.

When we first arrived to the resort, our room had a tray chocolate covered strawberries and a bottle of champagne on ice already waiting for us. We spent the remainder of the first day just lounging around the room, enjoying the amenities of our hotel. The hotel's private beaches and restaurant selection really took me aback. Living in New York City, we're often exposed to fine dining; but the resort's prepared cuisine would make even the ruling elite of Manhattan's kitchens cringing with envy.

We spent the next couple days relaxing and taking in some of the islands best activities. Both of us booked a SCUBA trip which was unbelievably beautiful. The wildlife along with the reefs we saw were so colorful and pristine. The water itself was also crystal clear; the best visibility either of us have experienced in our ten years of scuba diving. It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip.

The rest of our great stay in the British Virgin Islands was elegant and tranquil. Everyday we slept in, and had a wonderful brunch later in the morning. One day I took my wife golfing since she has been begging me to teach her. The course and greens were magnificently kept which she didn't appreciate nearly as much as I did. However, she did appreciate the beautiful scenery surrounding the course, so it was a win win for everyone.

Other days we decided to go into town and check out some shopping. Obviously this was more of my wife's idea, but to my surprise I actually enjoyed some of the shops and sights we came across. They had a great selection of apparel and other items for men that I wasn't expecting.

We also spent several days just lounging around the luxurious and ornate resort. They offered the best couples massage packages, something you must recommend to anyone else you send to that little snippet of heaven.

All in all, it was one of the best trips I have ever taken. The flights were flawless and the island offered a little bit of everything. Thanks again for all your help. Next time I'm headed out on a vacation I'll be sure that AskAboutTravel sets me up with another slice of paradise.

Sincerely,

Tom Bauster

If only I'd known

Dear Jen and Tom,

My husband and I just had our honeymoon in Los Cabos, Mexico at the beautiful Pueblo Bonito Pacifica Resort and Spa. The trip was absolutely wonderful and exactly what we wanted, a quiet and relaxing retreat where we could both pamper ourselves and each other. The Pacifica is the first and only wellness-oriented resort exclusively for adults in Los Cabos and we were really able to escape into utter tranquility and relaxation. The entire ambience of the resort made us feel so relaxed and made our honeymoon flawless and unforgettable, exactly what we wanted. What was even better was the helpful and attentive staff. Mariana, the front desk receptionist, welcomed us with a warm greeting and offered us something to drink when we checked in because it was pretty hot out, but I'm sure they'd do that even if it wasn't hot out. The heart of our trip was wonderful and we couldn't have asked for more, the horror comes when it was time to go home... I felt like Dorothy clicking her glittery red shoes "there's no place like home."

As a married couple you're supposed to be a team right? What happens when your team member doesn't do his homework and the whole team suffers? That makes for a very unhappy wife and when the wife's unhappy, everyone is unhappy. My husband, Jimmy and I split up the work into planning our honeymoon. I was a bit reluctant at first, considering his lack of attention to detail. I researched Los Cabos and the different resorts and he was in charge of booking the flights. I did my homework and made sure that Pueblo Bonito was the resort for us. My husband's number one concern was saving money. Sure, I kept our budget in mind but didn't want to be so frugal, it was our honeymoon after all. He spent about 20 minutes researching and booking our flight while I spent a good week and a half researching different resorts. He sure put in a lot of time didn't he? Connecting flights were substantially cheaper than non-stop flights and my husband jumped on the savings and booked us for a flight from Seattle to San Francisco to Los Cabos. It never occurred to him how much of a hassle connections could be and by the time he told me, it was too late to change our flight. Booking a non-stop flight would have saved us time and trouble and we wouldn't have been stuck at SFO for 9 hours. Maybe my team member should have been a travel agent instead of Jimmy.

Our flights to Los Cabos were fine, granted the layover was a little bit annoying but really it wasn't bad at all, only about an hour and a half and then we were off to Los Cabos. We flew from Seattle Washington and then made a stop in San Francisco. Smooth, easy transition. Our journey home from our heavenly honeymoon, however, was not so smooth. Our flight out of Los Cabos was at 8:55am so we made sure to be at the airport by 6:55am to check in and all that fun stuff. Well we got there and the people at the airline told us that the flight coming into Los Cabos that was going to fly us to SFO was late and in effect was going to make us miss our connecting flight. Our flight in San Francisco was supposed to be at 11:46am and we were supposed to be back home in Seattle by 2:00pm. Turns out all the flights in San Francisco after our 11:46 flight were completely booked until 9:00pm! We had to sit at SFO for 9 hours. We were put on standby for all the flights but had no luck getting on. We both finished our books we brought for the flight. We walked all over the airport, skimmed through magazines, ate and dozed off a few times. This was not the way I wanted to end my heavenly honeymoon. We ended up getting home pretty late and I had work bright and early the next morning so lets just say I was a tiny bit fatigued. Sure, the connecting flights saved us money but cost us quite a headache in the end. If only I'd known.

Sincerely,
Cindy and Jimmy

Plan Your Perfect Honeymoon

Let's face it, planning the perfect honeymoon is a daunting task. You know you want it to be unforgettable and you know that regardless of the time and destination, you want to look back on those few memorable days and think that was our first vacation together!
But the question is....how do you plan it? where do you even start to look? what kind of honeymoon do you want to plan? Romantic, relaxing, adventurous, tropical, to eco-friendly honeymoons, we've got it all and can plan it all!

If you've read the honeymoon stories from this site, you'll quickly realize that planning a wedding on your own could yield some unexpected and horrific honeymoon experiences. So please, do yourself a favor. Prevent these horror stories from happening to you and put your honeymoon planning in our hands. And don't count on speaking to some impersonal automated voice because we are actual people who will speak to you directly.

Visit our site at www.AskAboutHoneymoons.com
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Honeymoon from Hell

My Marriage Fell Apart...on Our Honeymoon!

We'd heard the first year of marriage was the hardest, but would we even make it that far?

My husband and I split up during our honeymoon. I explained the situation to friends and family by saying that we were separating "geographically." But as I barreled through the night on a 16-hour bus ride from Mendoza, Argentina, to Buenos Aires, quietly sobbing at the small screen playing 50 First Dates dubbed in Spanish, I knew there was more than geography between us. Three months into our honeymoon, our marriage was falling apart.

A year earlier when David had proposed, we'd already decided to take a four-month backpacking trip through South America. Combining our wedding, the trip, and a ski-bum season in Colorado allowed us to knock off three postgrad goals in one shot. Of course, I'd heard that the first year of marriage was the hardest, but hiking in the Andes and sipping Pisco sours on the rugged coast would make it easier, I figured. What I failed to consider were the challenges of spending 24 hours together, sticking to a tight budget, trying to stay cute in a steady rotation of three outfits, and sleeping in eight-bed hostel rooms with drunken Irish boys whose idea of entertainment meant dumping potted plants onto sleeping fellow guests.

A week after our wedding, we left for Ecuador. We traveled by bus and train and in the back of pickup trucks. One day we'd go into the jungle, and the next night we'd sleep in a cave. On the coast, we volunteered on an organic farm, waking up at 5 a.m. to help shovel manure. When it was dark, David would guard me at the outhouse, which was overrun with spiders the size of salad plates. Still, night after night in our tree-house bunk, one of us would alternately convince the other to stay and shovel pig shit for just one more day.

We made a few friends, but for the most part, we were decidedly uncool with the hostel crowd. Our fellow backpackers liked to ask, "You're married? Why?" After too many forced dinner conversations and overly competitive pool games, I wondered if they were on to something. If, in a tense moment, David were asked to describe our travel styles, he might have said that he's high-energy, active, and adventurous, while I'm slothlike and gluttonous. Posed the same question, I would say that I'm relaxed and easygoing and like to learn about a town by sitting in its cafés, while David races around from place to place, fulfilling his puritanical need to be productive.

With no break from each other's company, petty annoyances built, as when David, a teacher, would condescendingly commend my vocabulary. For example:

Me: "The door is ajar."

Him: "Good word."

After a day spent lazing at a luxury hotel, I made a comment about some ostentatious guests. "Are you sure that's the word you're looking for?" David asked. I wondered how I'd landed in the infuriating situation of defending my intellect to my dense pedant of a husband.

Standing at the base of Machu Picchu, I introduced the idea of spending some time apart. We started by splitting in the morning and meeting back up in the evening. Alone, I would have coffee and check out dinner spots, during which time David probably jogged the Inca trail and organized an ESL class. When he suggested going south after visiting Argentina's wine country, I said I would head north instead. Climbing onto the bus to Buenos Aires and leaving him behind was sad and surreal.

At my new hostel in B.A., I quickly met a cute South African playwright, and we partnered up to see the city. But he was nervous about taking the right train, unsure of our surroundings, and prone to getting lost on the slanted city streets, so I ditched him, relieved to realize that I wanted to be alone, not just apart from David. I settled into the rhythm of the city, moving into a hostel in Palermo Hollywood, finding a yoga class, and going out with friends of friends. Just as my weeks in B.A. started to feel less like travel and more like unemployment, David arrived.

We jumped all over each other when his taxi pulled up, and spent the night catching up in a little bar off the cobblestoned streets of San Telmo. But a day later, we were at odds again. We had been grossly overcharged to eat bad pizza, drink watery beer, and watch a junior soccer game. I thought the day was awful; he thought I was awful for complaining. Sitting in a dark pub that night, we had nothing to say even though we had weeks' worth of stories stored up. I cautiously broached whether we'd made a mistake in getting married. We'd been drawn so strongly to each other for the three years before we got married, but since the start of the trip, we hadn't been our best selves together. I was barely hiding my tears from the bartender. "It'll work itself out," I said.

"It won't work itself out," David replied flatly.

With a week left until our return flight, we decided to get one last country under our belts. We headed up the coast to Uruguay and settled in a sleepy fishing village, checking into a perfect little cabana a few steps from the beach. We walked miles of undeveloped beach, past fishing shacks decorated with old buoys, cooked meals with seafood straight off the boats, and didn't encounter another English speaker for the entire week. After months of crossing borders on packed buses, sleeping in crowded dorm rooms, and trying to figure out where we fit in among our inevitably single fellow backpackers, we were truly alone for the first time. And for the first time, we felt like a married couple.

When we returned home to Chicago with all of those memories from our months abroad, my favorite one was this: the day on the beach when we learned that if you can weather a rough patch, you will come out closer than ever. Since then, we've set a perfect daily routine for ourselves: I have a 9-to-5 publishing job and writing projects that let me sit quietly and get absorbed in a subject; David has a classroom full of students grateful for his energy and vocabulary. Two years into our marriage, I'm looking forward to a lifetime of living with him. And traveling with my sister.

-Article by Liz Fischer via www.marieclaire.com

Booze Cruise = Bad Cruise?

Dear Jen and Tom,

Last week my husband and I went on a cruise to Mexico for our honeymoon. Our destination itinerary included: Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas. Little had we known that many college students would be on spring break at the same time. During our week of vacation, there would be crazy drunk kids running around screaming in the middle of the night for 7 days. This was absolutely unbearable and it was just our luck that we somehow got stuck on the floor where they were all living. One time, we had even witnessed two guys “play fighting” in their boxers in the hallway. This was way too much for me to handle, so we decided to try and have our room switched. We went to guest services and they tried to switch our rooms but there were no more rooms available left in our category and the only way we could switch was to a presidential suite and it would cost way too much out of our budget, so we decided to stick with it. They promised they would speak to the guests that were misbehaving and give them warnings. That didn’t help much since they had so many rooms; they just kept moving from room to room. This was a complete nightmare.

When we finally got to port, we were so relieved to finally be at peace but we were wrong. They seemed to have followed us everywhere we went, or so we thought. There were spring breakers at every port causing a ruckus. We wish we had booked it through a travel agency and had the advice given to us about the timing and destination of our choice. We obviously did poor planning and our ignorance of the travel industry brought our honeymoon to the gutter. Next time, we will most definitely go to a travel agent to help us choose a more romantic way to re-do our honeymoon.

Sincerely,

Annie and Zack

Seattle, WA

A List of Unfortunate Events

Dear Jen and Tom,

My husband and I had just recently taken a tour of China and the surrounding areas for our honeymoon. Since I am the type of person who likes to do everything on my own I decided to plan the whole trip. I booked the plane tickets and all the hotels via the internet. Needless to say, I wish I just done it through a travel agency to coordinate all of our transfers to and from the airports, the land tours and to deal with all of our unfortunate events.

We first flew into Hong Kong which is an amazing city but our luggage had not made it to our destination. It was still stuck in the states and needed another day to get here since it took us 22 hours to arrive to Hong Kong. We check-in to our hotel and the hotel is decent but a little small. We reserved a room with 1 king-sized bed and got a bed smaller than a queen but not yet a full. We go to the front desk and try to explain to them what happened and they said they couldn’t do anything for us. We find out later that is what they call a king-sized bed. My husband is a large man and that first night of sleep was awful, uncomfortable and not so much fun for us as newly weds.

The next day comes and we’re off to the mainland without our suitcases. They promised to get our luggage to our next destination so we had to deal with what we had as carry-ons. (The people in China are small and don’t carry very large clothing). The transfer that we had arranged ended up being this petite truck with no seat belts. It had holes in the seats, cigarette burns all over and smelt like a dead skunk. The ride was 3 hours and I wanted to vomit from the condition the car was in and the way the driver was driving. Red apparently doesn’t mean stop, it’s just a suggestion. At least we got our luggage there.

We stayed in a city called Guang Zhou for 2 nights and witnessed the most indecent thing happening in our hotel. Witnessing this had definitely threw me off and made me want to switch hotels; if I had an extra night. I was so happy to leave the next day to Shanghai. That was probably the best part of my trip. After Shanghai we went to Beijing where people at the hotel were rude and unwelcoming. Hailing a taxi and having it take you to where you wanted was by far the hardest thing to do. Taxi drivers would pretend not to know where our destination was if they didn’t want to take you there. How could you not know where the most touristy destinations are? Not to mention traffic was absolutely ridiculous and the subways smelled like rotten bananas. We ended up walking a lot and this time of the year is beyond freezing. It was so cold I wore 2 pairs of pants and 3 shirts on top of all my outerwear. We took a tour to the Great Wall and the tour bus driver got lost for an extra 2 hours.

I was completely over our honeymoon and just wanted to return to the United States. We tried to switch our plane tickets for an earlier flight out but didn’t succeed because of the fare differences. They wanted us to pay an extra $1,000 each. We felt like we were being held captive on our own honeymoon.

Best Regards,

Sandy and Mike

Boston, Ma