18/09/2026
12 years ago today, we finally made it home from our honeymoon… after spending it in a hurricane. 🌪️
As someone who has travelled a lot over the years, I’ve collected my fair share of travel stories, but this one has to be right up there.
Our honeymoon started exactly as we had planned. A fly-drive through the American Southwest, starting in Las Vegas and making our way through some incredible national parks.
We drove through Zion, with its huge sandstone cliffs and winding roads through the canyon, then on to Bryce Canyon, famous for its thousands of orange rock spires known as hoodoos.
From there we headed to Moab and explored Canyonlands and the surrounding area. Canyonlands is absolutely incredible – huge canyons, mesas and rock formations carved by the Colorado and Green Rivers. We also visited Arches National Park, home to more than 2,000 natural sandstone arches.
It was one of those trips where every day felt completely different.
We finished the road trip in Park City before flying down to Cabo San Lucas for the relaxing part of our honeymoon.
Or so we thought…
When we arrived at Salt Lake City airport to catch our flight to Cabo, the airline agent told me I didn’t have a valid ticket and that I wouldn’t be allowed to board.
I explained that everything had been booked correctly.
She insisted it hadn’t.
After quite a lot of back and forth, I eventually had to pay for another seat on the plane just to get us there.
And the slightly ironic part?
I politely told her that I was my own travel agent. 😂
I later received an apology from the airline and, in hindsight, I sometimes wonder whether that was the universe trying to tell us not to get on that plane…
But if you know me, you’ll know I’m pretty determined!
So we landed in Cabo.
And the weather had definitely changed.
There was a hurricane nearby, although at that point it wasn't expected to hit Cabo directly, so we carried on with our plans.
The next morning, my husband and I headed out scuba diving – something we absolutely loved doing before having children.
It was… not the dive we were expecting.
The sea was rough, there was a really strong current and something just didn’t feel right. We ended the dive early and headed back towards the hotel.
And that’s when things got serious.
We were told that Hurricane Odile was heading towards Cabo and that the hotel was putting its emergency plans into action.
We were moved into the conference centre that evening, where sunbeds had been laid out as makeshift beds for everyone to sleep on.
Then, during the night, the hurricane really hit.
The noise was incredible. The wind was absolutely terrifying.
And then we realised the roof of the conference centre was starting to come off.
We were evacuated again – this time down into the basement for safety.
After a long and very frightening night, the worst of the storm eventually passed.
But the story didn't end there.
Cabo had been devastated. Buildings were damaged, windows had blown out, power and communications were down and the airport had suffered major damage. Odile was one of the most destructive hurricanes ever to hit the Baja California peninsula.
We were told that we were now effectively “refugees” and that the hotel was going to do everything it could to get us out.
We were young, fit and able, so we were understandably low priority compared with families, older travellers and those who needed medical assistance.
So for the next five days, we settled into a very strange routine.
Play cards.
Eat whatever supplies the hotel had left.
Try to sleep.
Wait.
Repeat.
Eventually, the hotel told us they were running out of food and water and that we needed to make our way to the airport to be evacuated.
We queued for around 10 hours.
Eventually, we were put on an evacuation flight to Dallas Fort Worth.
And somehow, unbelievably, that flight connected with our original booking home from DFW to London Heathrow.
After everything that had happened, we actually made it home on our original day.
I remember being so relieved to walk through the doors at Heathrow.
And looking back now, this trip is one of the reasons I feel so strongly about the value of having someone behind your holiday booking.
Because most of the time, travel goes exactly to plan.
But sometimes it doesn't.
Flights get cancelled. Weather changes. People get ill. Hotels have problems. Natural disasters happen. Plans suddenly need to change.
And when you're thousands of miles from home, having someone who knows your booking, understands the options and can help you work out what to do next can make a huge difference.
I certainly never expected my honeymoon to involve an emergency evacuation from a hurricane.
But 12 years later, it's still one of the travel stories I tell most often.
And yes… I still think I would have got on that flight to Cabo. 😂
