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ADVANCED ENGLISH

The Survivors of Vallarta

One of my favorite life experiences can also be categorized as one of the worst I have ever
lived. Today, I laugh when remembering all the bad things that happened the first days of
that summer, but in retrospective, the situation that my friends and I faced those days was
not funny, at all. In fact, it all could have been avoided if we had been more cautious. But I
dare to say that our friendship wouldn’t be as strong as it is if we had not lived through such
daunting experiences.
It was the summer of 2011, and I was going through my third year of gastronomy studies
in Tampico. As part of our school program, we had to cover 1500 hours of field practice, or,
in other words, we had to work that amount of time in order to graduate. We were already
used to working during the summer season; I had already worked in a local hotel at the beach
in Madero, Tamaulipas, and with my friends at Playa del Cármen, Quintana Roo. This time,
my friends and I were planning to go to Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco.
As usual, it was my job to deal with the arrangements, and after making several phone
calls and gathering information I had found the hotel to perform our training and reserved
our flight tickets. I also had been tasked to take care of the accommodation issue, after all,
we needed a place to stay for the summer. I had found several offers, but we were just days
away from departing and my friends were worried about not having a place upon arriving to
the city, so I brokered a deal with a landholder to rent an apartment for the six of us. All went
smoothly, except that the owner wanted one month of payment in advance, so he could
“reserve” the property. Some of us refused, but the others insisted that we had no time, and
that we had to confirm the reservation. In the end, we confirmed and sent part of the money
to the owner.
After that, everything was set into motion. The day came, and we finally departed to
Puerto Vallarta. The trip was a pleasant one, and everything was fine, until we arrived at the
city. The first thing I did after getting off the plane was to call the landholder to confirm our
reservation and head to the apartment immediately. His phone was ringing, but there was no
answer. After a few minutes of trying to contact him, it stopped ringing at all, as if it had
been turned off. He had also stopped answering my messages. I wish I had listened to my
instincts, but everything hinted towards my initial suspicion: we had been scammed.
Obviously, we were very irritated by this, but we accepted our fault in the matter, we
should have known better. What we needed at that moment was a place to stay for the night,
so we went out of the airport and looked for a taxi. We got on an SUV that overcharged us,
in my opinion, and it took us downtown to look for hotels. Just as we thought, there were no
vacancies; after all, it was summer, and it is high demand season for Puerto Vallarta. We
looked for about an hour, until we found a modest three-star hotel. Reluctantly, we booked
two overpriced rooms and moved on to plan our next move.
We called our parents and the school to inform them of the situation, even though there
was little that they could do. They suggested us to call the hotel, arguing that maybe they
could help us sort something out. We tried calling our contact in the hotel, but the
management people told us that she didn’t work there anymore. What’s more, they denied
having knowledge of any arrangements with us. Apparently, our contact at the hotel had lost
several important files, and it was said that they had fired her for that reason. Therefore, she
must have lost our paperwork too, so no one at the hotel knew that we were coming to work
there in the first place.
We were devastated by this. After being scammed and having spent a lot of money to get
there, now this? What else could go wrong? My friends and I were completely demoralized.
Of the girls, Ana looked like she had been crying for hours, and Lizette was mad angry. Of
the guys, Luis started drinking heavily, Edgar was staring vacantly at the horizon and Julian
had gone “for a walk”, but I knew he was furious too. I did not know what to do either. I tried
to boost their morale by talking to them, telling them jokes and making plans for the next
day, but it was useless, most of them were already thinking of going home, wishing that none
of this had happened.
Unfortunately, things were about to get worse. After several hours, we noticed that Julian
had not returned yet, and it was already past midnight. We tried calling him on the phone but
apparently, he had turned it off. Fearing for the worst, we scrambled out of the hotel and set
out to find him on the streets of Vallarta’s “old downtown”. Although it was late at night,
Vallarta was swarming with people, which only made it harder to find our friend. We walked
the pier from end to end, and after several hours of searching, we headed for the hotel feeling
very frustrated. It was then, after almost all of our hope had died, that we saw him. He was
sitting alone on a ledge by the beach, gazing at the sea, and holding a “caguama” in one of
his hands. It may have been due to the relief or the anxiety, but we all burst into laughter.
By that time, it was almost dawn, but oddly, we were not tired anymore. We were just
happy to have found him unharmed. From that point forward, we refused to give up. Then,
we shared that “caguama”, as we watched the sunrise together, wondering what kind of
adventures were waiting for us on that day, and for the rest of the summer.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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