There are photos of my boyfriend and travel partner scattered all over my apartment. The artifacts from adventures around the world adorn my crowded bookshelf, sit upon the windowsill, have been tucked into the beveled frame of my living room mirror, and cover my refrigerator like colorful decoupage. With a glance around my apartment, I can see Benjamin on beds and beaches of Mexico and Hawaii. I see him on a train in Thailand, and stoking blazing fires at various campgrounds in Northern California. In my favorite photo, he is devouring a Corona and giant plate of huevos rancheros in the Yucatan at 9:00 a.m. All photos have a story behind them, but this particular picture, looking something like a gen-X ad for beer, has a hidden tale of a frustrating and tiring and uncomfortable voyage to paradise.

It was September, the beginning of hurricane season, and we were headed to the pristine beaches and ancient Mayan ruins of Tulum, Mexico. We booked cheap tickets with Sun Trips and ended up on the red-eye flight from San Francisco to Cancun aboard a small charter plane. We thought our exit row seats would be the best in the house, as they typically give people extra legroom. We were dismayed to find that the plane, our bed for the night, did not follow this convention. In fact, we had the worst seats of anybody. Ours didn’t recline. As the snores and heavy breathing of our fellow travelers reminded us that we, too, should be sleeping, we found that our recline buttons had been hastily ripped out of our armrests. I nearly cut my finger on the jagged metal edge of the sharp, vacant hole that used to house the beloved recline button. We had to spend the hours between midnight and seven a.m. at a 90 degree angle with the passengers’ seats in front of us fully reclined.

With nothing to do but painfully listen to the dreams of the sleeping passengers, I began to scan my surroundings. I pondered the designer’s intentions behind the awful geometric patterns on the upholstery. I examined the illustrations on the barf bag. I stared at the beige molded plastic formations that contained our luggage above my head. And then I saw the duct tape used to repair some malfunction on the seats across the aisle from us. Duct tape! It was one thing to have recklessly ripped out parts of the plane. It was another thing to blatantly fix the plane with adhesive that anyone can buy at K-Mart. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that our pilot had a glass eye, prosthetic hands, narcolepsy, and a nasty drinking problem.

The rest of the flight went according to plan, that is, nothing fell apart or cut me, and the plane stayed safely in the air. We rented a newly built, red VW bug at the airport from a grouchy man who seemed to be having a hard time shaking off his drinks from the night before. I think he’s the one who later made repeated charges to my credit card, long after we had returned to the United States. We drove a little over an hour south, to the small town of Tulum. The highway was wide, sparse, and deserted. We had the windows of our little bug all the way down, finding little relief from the warm air that rushed into the car. Sweat trickled down the small of my back and made my seat feel damp. Lack of sleep made my head feel light and my mood a little irritable.

We arrived at our destination, one that we chose on the spot, and checked into the Don Armando Beach Huts for $15.00 a night. We were led beyond the outdoor reception counter to a small grouping of stucco huts with thatched-roofs. Our escort could not speak English and we could recall very little Spanish. After lots of smiling, pointing, and nodding of heads (the only way we could communicate with him) we ended up in a sparsely furnished hut with a wonderful view of the ocean. We’d circled the beach several times in fatigued confusion until we finally realized that we were to choose the hut we wanted. Our escort must have thought we were incredibly picky. If he’d ridden next to us on the plane, he’d have known that we were extremely tolerant.

Instead of flopping down onto the sand to take a nap under a palm tree, we decided to grab breakfast at the nearby open-aired restaurant. We ordered huevos rancheros and Corona beers and fumbled through the purchase with the cashier. As we sat at a table, squeezing the sandy floor between our toes, I took a photo of Benjamin to mark the moment of our arrival, the first time we’d felt comfortable since climbing into the cab in San Francisco. In the picture, his hand is poised in mid air, holding a fork, ready to pounce on runny eggs covered with red sauce and mushy refried beans. A wicker basket with bread has been abandoned and pushed to the edge of the table. A Corona, half gone, sits in the foreground with eagerness. Benjamin is looking at me with the faint line of a smile on his lips. Good things were to come.