Travel horror stories. The ones that make for great bar talk later.

[Shane Limbeck]

Every trip has its surprises. Missed flights, broken gear, bad weather, worse company, or a border crossing that got a little too interesting.

What’s your best travel disaster story? The one that was hell in the moment but turned into a classic once you made it home.

Tell it like you would at the bar. The worse it was, the better it probably is now.

 

[Godfather]

Let me tell you a story.

Mexico circa 2019. I get off the plane in Mexico City, coming from Bogota, Columbia. I'm there to negotiate a large-scale deal or rather keep us from giving away the farm in a stupid large-scale deal, and my counter party is aggressive, and connected, so I am looking forward to this somewhat like tearing fingernails off with pliers. My colleague and I are met by our driver, my code word back then was Mr. Mike Salazar, not my real name, so we get our bags and hop in our black suburban. We are out of the airport 100 yards and are pincered to the curb by two Federal Police Suburban's, and all but one are wearing balaclavas and speak zero English. My Spanish is decent, my Portuguese better, a story for another time, but these folks are all business and immediately we are held with weapons at forehead, and it's blazing hot and the sweat is rolling. They tear the Suburban apart and then start in on our luggage. Coincidentally, that week my wife had suggested a new homeopathic vitamin regimen for me, always trying to make me healthier, and it's liquid format in small brown pharmaceutical bottles. When they find those, they come after me for narcotics and I am trying to explain they are "vitaminos" - not a fun moment. After two hours of this bullshit, and the continuing, call it pestering thought in my head that these cops are being paid by my counter party so I will miss the negotiation, and just getting tired of staring at the sweaty finger on the trigger of the HK MP5 pointed at my head, I say to the one guy not masked, "I've had enough of your bullshit, it's time to take us to jail, or take us to the US Embassy", I immediately get whacked in the leg with a baton, and told to shut up. What do you do when you are a stubborn Irish dude, you rinse and repeat. I just kept it up until the guy got tired of hitting me and decided to take action. Next thing you know, he looks at his watch, and signals his crew, and they are gone as fast as they showed up. I did end up validating it was a paid gig by my adversary, and I did keep us out of that crappy deal. Upon returning home, I told my wife, never again will I take some new-fangled vitamin thing on my foreign travels, which in that era were over a million miles a year, offshore about 80-% of the time. The morale of the story: vitamins are for pussies, an MP5 only hurts when it goes off and is pointed at you, and be a Lion, not a Lamb, as lambs get slaughtered on someone else's schedule, Lions walk across the divide to what's next when they choose.

 

[Keith Wood]

Getting the runs in Bolivia. Think explosive. I'm confident that I have a lifetime ban from the AMEX lounge in the Santa Cruz Airport thanks to my interpretation of Jackson Pollock's work.

 

[noah.w.west]

Long story, but the short version is I thought I was going to die in a hotel in Morocco about 10 years ago from some sort of still mysterious internal problem. Took two or three days to happen before I instead got better.

 

[cwiatrek86]

My wife and I were in Cabo when Hurricane Odile (Cat 4) hit. Hung out in town for several days afterwards and then finally made it to the airport on Day 5.

All power and communication were out so the planes were landing/taking off blind. People were lined up for miles just waiting for planes to arrive.

 

[ctpritt]

Any flight to or from Lagos Nigeria- A flight I've done at least 15 times. I'm pretty sure this is where the "Jetway Jesus" started

Also- the airport is sweltering, and there are random people in uniforms calling you over for bribes. Traffic is so bad that you leave 5hrs early for a 20 mile drive.

 

[rjkuntz]

Investigating a plane crash on Culebra Island (P.R.). I have to travel to Vieques to meet with people the next day. Hop over on a Caravan as the sun is going down. The little hotel where I was going to stay is on the south side of island (airport is on the north) sends a driver in a jeep to pick me up. Problem is, the driver arrives literally stinking drunk. So now it's dark, I'm damned if he's gonna drive. He's fine with me driving, but this is pre-GPS-on-every phone, I did not have a map, so he's giving me directions (sorta) as I'm trying to drive across the island in a jeep with one working headlight. In the daytime, if you know the way this is a 20 minute drive. Took us an hour of wrong turns and misdirections. (And my Spanish is really very good.)

I've driven all over the world, but that was just about the most memorable hour of them all. Little hotel had a fine little bar, so it worked out fine. Driver was the owner's son, or son-in-law. We all shared a nightcap.

 

[emerituslandscaping]

Let me tell you a story.

Mexico circa 2019. I get off the plane in Mexico City, coming from Bogota, Columbia. I'm there to negotiate a large-scale deal or rather keep us from giving away the farm in a stupid large-scale deal, and my counter party is aggressive, and connected, so I am looking forward to this somewhat like tearing fingernails off with pliers. My colleague and I are met by our driver, my code word back then was Mr. Mike Salazar, not my real name, so we get our bags and hop in our black suburban. We are out of the airport 100 yards and are pincered to the curb by two Federal Police Suburban's, and all but one are wearing balaclavas and speak zero English. My Spanish is decent, my Portuguese better, a story for another time, but these folks are all business and immediately we are held with weapons at forehead, and it's blazing hot and the sweat is rolling. They tear the Suburban apart and then start in on our luggage. Coincidentally, that week my wife had suggested a new homeopathic vitamin regimen for me, always trying to make me healthier, and it's liquid format in small brown pharmaceutical bottles. When they find those, they come after me for narcotics and I am trying to explain they are "vitaminos" - not a fun moment. After two hours of this bullshit, and the continuing, call it pestering thought in my head that these cops are being paid by my counter party so I will miss the negotiation, and just getting tired of staring at the sweaty finger on the trigger of the HK MP5 pointed at my head, I say to the one guy not masked, "I've had enough of your bullshit, it's time to take us to jail, or take us to the US Embassy", I immediately get whacked in the leg with a baton, and told to shut up. What do you do when you are a stubborn Irish dude, you rinse and repeat. I just kept it up until the guy got tired of hitting me and decided to take action. Next thing you know, he looks at his watch, and signals his crew, and they are gone as fast as they showed up. I did end up validating it was a paid gig by my adversary, and I did keep us out of that crappy deal. Upon returning home, I told my wife, never again will I take some new-fangled vitamin thing on my foreign travels, which in that era were over a million miles a year, offshore about 80-% of the time. The morale of the story: vitamins are for pussies, an MP5 only hurts when it goes off and is pointed at you, and be a Lion, not a Lamb, as lambs get slaughtered on someone else's schedule, Lions walk across the divide to what's next when they choose.

I've heard that your Portuguese is spot on. You must have had a great teacher. - Bubbles

 

[Godfather]

I've heard that your Portuguese is spot on. You must have had a great teacher. - Bubbles

Bubbles,

she was hotter than a poker left in the fire for an hour, and I was the proverbial shitty student, so it was a good formula. Shocking I remember anything, but darn it has come in handy a few times.

Miss you @emerituslandscaping

 

[johnson_jacob_c]

This story takes place earlier this year when my wife and I decided to venture over to France for some Roe deer hunting. We thought it would be a great opportunity to explore some other parts of France as well, so we tacked on a couple extra days on the front end for Toulouse, and a couple of days on the back end for Paris.

Toulouse was beautiful, and the people were kind. We spent quite a bit of time at an English pub named Seven Sisters and got way too drunk with the owner Paul, and a Frenchman named Louie that spoke excellent English and played American football for a few years, but I digress. We then headed south to some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen, rolling hills filled with sunflowers and sheep herders.

After the hunt it was time to head back north to visit Paris, and this is where the story takes a turn. Immediately after landing in Paris, grabbing our baggage, and venturing into the city to find our hotel, I had the bright idea to take what looked like a shortcut. This shortcut proved to be anything but, and we ended up in a very peculiar part of town that was housing a homeless man and his tent. The placement of such tent was on a balcony that gradually ramped downwards towards the dirty city streets. As we closed in on this homeless man's encampment, he started getting agitated and accused us of recording him. He quickly arose from his cluttered tent area and immediately closed the distance on me, luckily my wife had already passed by this man. He proceeded to scream broken English at me, and I tried defusing the situation but also trying to get a grip on my surroundings. I am not a small man and planned on hitting him with a judo toss over the balcony wall, I figured that would be easier to explain to the authorities if push came to shove. As my patience started to wear thin, my wife came over and started in on him and eventually he gave us enough room to escape. Thankfully I didn't have to toss him overboard, because it was about a ten foot drop to the concrete and surely he would have been critically injured. This encounter was a wake up call for us simple Americans and we were both on high alert the rest of the time we were in Paris.

It was truly a sad experience in Paris, so much rich Christian history in that city, yet when you walk the streets you are overwhelmingly surrounded by third worlders. In conclusion, if you decide to visit France whether it is for sight seeing or hunting, limit your time in Paris and always have a plan in case you're confronted by troubled "citizens".

 

[jcupdrew]

I decided to do a self guided tour of Communa 13 in a rental car with my family in Medellin. Bad idea. One way out if you take a wrong turn. Felt like a scene from training day.

 

[spalind]

Any flight to or from Lagos Nigeria- A flight I've done at least 15 times. I'm pretty sure this is where the "Jetway Jesus" started

Also- the airport is sweltering, and there are random people in uniforms calling you over for bribes. Traffic is so bad that you leave 5hrs early for a 20 mile drive.

Can confirm this and I'll add...follow the local conditions there for the haboobs (dust storms coming off the Sahara). Why? Because at last note the Lagos airport doesn't have electronics necessary to get big planes in and out under bad conditions. Thus...a one week stay at the Radison Blu there turns into a week or two because your fixer advises 1) the trip overland to Ghana takes multiple days but if you really want to he'll do that and 2) while the trip to Abuja is shorter, he is unwilling to do it as he'd have to hire multiple security teams to get you there and insurance won't cover your dead body. Oh....and don't be fooled by the "lagoon side pool" at the Radison....its a swamp. And the buffet food gets REAL old real quick while the bar can't make a pizza to save its life.

 

[Hobby Guide]

About 10 years ago I went with group of friends to Nepal for a semi exploratory tahr and blue sheep hunt. A retired outfitter arranged a large team of 10 local guides who only spoke Nepali and had never guided hunters before. We had been made aware of this while planning the trip and had no issues with it. These locals required that our entire group hunt together every day and it took us 8 days and at least 20 attempts to kill 4 blue sheep. The sheep were abundant but nearly every attempt was thwarted by our local guides arguing loudly, often yelling at each other, about how to kill the ram during which we would watch the sheep spook off, over and over again. When we finally killed the last ram we had 4 days left to kill 3 tahr. On the ninth day we moved up the mountain to the tahr area where I was shooting first. Before leaving I made it very clear, while remaining polite and professional, that I would be very appreciative if the guides could be much quieter. We were hunting off of ponies and left before dawn riding up a steep goat trail for 2 or more hours to get to the spot where they had last seen a group of tahr from . As soon as we found a herd we ground staked the ponies and stashed some gear to lighten our packs. When we signaled we were ready the guides predictably started to argue, and I quickly left no doubt that they should shut up, but this time I was quite stern and possibly a little rude. Ignoring their proposed plan, we hiked up the backside of knife ridge towards the tahr while it started to snow, looking back I noticed that only two of the ten locals had come with us. I was grateful for this at the time. . By the time we got to where I wanted to be there was a half inch or more of snow on the ground and our two remaining guides were still making their way up, walking as slow as possible, clearly still upset about my comments earlier. One of them made eye contact with me and help up his hand to make the shape of an O with his thumb and index finger, the asian gesture for "fuck you". After peaking over the ridge to confirm the tahr were still there and waiting for our guides I set up and took a shot. I hit the billy just slightly too far back and it ran with the rest of the herd over the next ridge and out of sight. Without a second thought my friends and I quickly made our way to next ridge stopping where we had last seen the billy. Within an thirty minutes of the first shot we were back on him and I was able place a second shot perfectly through the base of his neck as he faced me laying down with his head up. After the high fives it dawned on all of us that our two remaining guides were not with us, we shrugged it off and went over to the billy. We quickly took pictures caped it out, gutted it and loaded our packs while it continued to snow. With the fresh snow on the ground the mountain looked just different enough that we weren't entirely sure how to get back to where we had left the ponies and our gear. Thankfully we had marked on our GPS's where the ponies and camp were, but unfortunately none of us had tracked the route. We knew where to go but not how to get there. Our 3 or 4 hour hike from the ponies took twice as long on the way back and we arrived just before dark to find our gear but no ponies and no guides. We briefly discussed sleeping on the mountain but quickly decided against it. We spent over an hour trying to find the goat trail we rode up with nothing but our headlamps and eventually had to walk the 2,000 vertical feet downhill back to camp on the side of the mountain, having to backtrack multiple times. Each one of us came close to falling off multiple times and when we finally arrived in camp a little before dawn we found our guides getting ready to head back up the mountain. Probably expecting to have to hide our dead bodies. We slept the rest of the day and started the multi day trek back to civilization the following morning in ABSOLUTE silence.

 

[Godfather]

Hell of an adventure, BRAVO, that’s one for the books!

About 10 years ago I went with group of friends to Nepal for a semi exploratory tahr and blue sheep hunt. A retired outfitter arranged a large team of 10 local guides who only spoke Nepali and had never guided hunters before. We had been made aware of this while planning the trip and had no issues with it. These locals required that our entire group hunt together every day and it took us 8 days and at least 20 attempts to kill 4 blue sheep. The sheep were abundant but nearly every attempt was thwarted by our local guides arguing loudly, often yelling at each other, about how to kill the ram during which we would watch the sheep spook off, over and over again. When we finally killed the last ram we had 4 days left to kill 3 tahr. On the ninth day we moved up the mountain to the tahr area where I was shooting first. Before leaving I made it very clear, while remaining polite and professional, that I would be very appreciative if the guides could be much quieter. We were hunting off of ponies and left before dawn riding up a steep goat trail for 2 or more hours to get to the spot where they had last seen a group of tahr from . As soon as we found a herd we ground staked the ponies and stashed some gear to lighten our packs. When we signaled we were ready the guides predictably started to argue, and I quickly left no doubt that they should shut up, but this time I was quite stern and possibly a little rude. Ignoring their proposed plan, we hiked up the backside of knife ridge towards the tahr while it started to snow, looking back I noticed that only two of the ten locals had come with us. I was grateful for this at the time. . By the time we got to where I wanted to be there was a half inch or more of snow on the ground and our two remaining guides were still making their way up, walking as slow as possible, clearly still upset about my comments earlier. One of them made eye contact with me and help up his hand to make the shape of an O with his thumb and index finger, the asian gesture for "fuck you". After peaking over the ridge to confirm the tahr were still there and waiting for our guides I set up and took a shot. I hit the billy just slightly too far back and it ran with the rest of the herd over the next ridge and out of sight. Without a second thought my friends and I quickly made our way to next ridge stopping where we had last seen the billy. Within an thirty minutes of the first shot we were back on him and I was able place a second shot perfectly through the base of his neck as he faced me laying down with his head up. After the high fives it dawned on all of us that our two remaining guides were not with us, we shrugged it off and went over to the billy. We quickly took pictures caped it out, gutted it and loaded our packs while it continued to snow. With the fresh snow on the ground the mountain looked just different enough that we weren't entirely sure how to get back to where we had left the ponies and our gear. Thankfully we had marked on our GPS's where the ponies and camp were, but unfortunately none of us had tracked the route. We knew where to go but not how to get there. Our 3 or 4 hour hike from the ponies took twice as long on the way back and we arrived just before dark to find our gear but no ponies and no guides. We briefly discussed sleeping on the mountain but quickly decided against it. We spent over an hour trying to find the goat trail we rode up with nothing but our headlamps and eventually had to walk the 2,000 vertical feet downhill back to camp on the side of the mountain, having to backtrack multiple times. Each one of us came close to falling off multiple times and when we finally arrived in camp a little before dawn we found our guides getting ready to head back up the mountain. Probably expecting to have to hide our dead bodies. We slept the rest of the day and started the multi day trek back to civilization the following morning in ABSOLUTE silence.

 

[peytonaukland39]

I was 13 and my dad and I were headed for our first fishing trip in Canada. The outfitter was based around The Georgian Bay. The only other “international travel” I’d been on up to that point were some cruises down in the Caribbean and driving across the border into British Columbia from Washington with my grandfather. We get to the check-in for our flight and realize I only had a passport card, which the agent less than kindly informed us was not permitted for international flight, only travel by boat or car. Safe to say my dad and I were shitting our pants for about 30 minutes. We finally devised a plan to fly into Buffalo, rent a car, and drove 6 hours north overnight into Killarney, ON. Ended up catching the largest pike of my life on that trip.