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Holiday Horrors And How To Avoid Them

Going on holiday should be a time to kick back and relax. A nice beach holiday. A romantic city break. In reality, however, travelling away from home can be bloomin’ dangerous, with every minute being nothing more than a struggle for survival! Luckily, our very own Internet fanatic (and now paranoid traveller) Dom, has been doing some digging and has found four examples of holiday horrors and worked out how you can avoid them.

Work in progress

What’s the first thing you expect to see when you turn up at your hotel? No, not a bellboy holding a tray full of cocktails and snacks. The hotel. Yes, the first thing you expect to see is the hotel itself. This is pretty elementary stuff really but, unfortunately, this isn’t always what happens. One woman turned up at her dream holiday destination to discover that the hotel she’d booked to stay in hadn’t actually been built yet. The tour operator was helpful enough to mention this salient fact only after they’d arrived in Bulgaria at two in the morning (or ‘bedtime’ as I call it).

To be sure there’s definitely going to be a hotel waiting for you when you arrive at your destination, make sure you research your accommodation well. You can’t necessarily trust the tour operators to tell you, as the case above demonstrates, so check with third-parties. Another great way to scope out a hotel or a tour operator, is to check their reviews. There are hundreds of travel sites online, like TripAdvisor, where you can read reviews posted by other people. As well as doing your research you might want to think about taking out InsureandGo’s Holiday Dispute Cover too.

This must be a wind up

As far as holiday nightmares go, a hurricane is pretty much the worst you could think of. They’re windy. They’re rainy. They have odd names. They’re just plain unpleasant. In 2004, an incredibly unlucky bunch of holidaymakers in the Caribbean were relocated to avoid the incoming Hurricane Frances. All very well and good, you might say. Well, it would be if they weren’t relocated into the path of yet another storm, Hurricane Ivan! The tourists ended up spending 36 hours in the dining hall of another hotel with just one toilet for 300 people. As amenities go, I’ve definitely seen better…

Avoiding Hurricanes Tom, Dick and Harry can be easily done with a little research. If you’re going somewhere that’s prone to extreme weather like hurricanes or tornadoes, make sure you check the seasons. The Atlantic hurricane season occurs from 1st June to 30th November, peaking from late August through to September. Cyclones in the Northwest Pacific occur all year round with a minimum in February and March. Pacific typhoons tend to make an appearance between May and November but do pop up at other times throughout the year too.

Oh yes, and take an umbrella…

Well-armed?

Having to cut my own arm off comes pretty high up on my ‘Things That I Definitely Don’t Want To Do On Holiday’ list (I’m sure you’ve all got lists like that). Well, this is exactly what happened to American mountain climber, Aron Ralston, whilst mountaineering in Utah in 2003. After getting his arm trapped under a boulder, Aron was stuck up the mountain for five whole days. Eventually, delirious and dehydrated, Aron was forced to free himself by cutting his lower arm off with a knife. Fortunately, he made it out alive but that’s more than can be said for his right arm.

If you’re thinking of going wandering up a mountain and don’t want to end up returning sans arm, make sure you tell someone where you’re going and how long you expect to be gone for. Aron’s hike should have lasted just eight hours but he ended up getting trapped for five days instead. Had someone known he was late returning, they could have gone looking for him and rescued him before he had to resort to self-harm. This next tip is a simple but very effective: go hiking with someone else. Taking a partner along can save your life; if you get trapped there’s someone there to either help free you or go and get help. Taking a mobile phone with you can also ensure that help is at hand should things turn nasty, providing of course you can get a signal.

On the rocks… or on the bog?

From hurricanes and self-mutilation to ice cubes. Yes, it doesn’t sound as exciting as the other stories but this can also cause serious holiday misery. One unlucky traveller, while holidaying in Cancun in Mexico, was left violently sick and had to be rushed to hospital after drinking a nice cold milkshake. The ‘drinking water’ in many countries isn’t necessarily safe to drink and can cause you to become very ill indeed due to microorganisms that live within. Unfortunately for this hapless tourist, Mexico is one such country. Other countries with drinking water that offends our sensitive British guts include Turkey, Vietnam and most developing African countries.

If being sick on holiday isn’t on your To Do list then it’s probably best to avoid water as much as possible, unless it’s bottled spring water (which is usually filtered and sterilised). You must also be aware of other drinks or meals that might contain water. Ice cubes area no-no as they’re almost always made from regular tap water, rather than bottled water. If you don’t have access to bottled water, you can sterilise water yourself by boiling it. The high temperature will kill the microorganisms within the water, rendering it safe to drink without requiring a rapid dash to the local toilet afterwards.