How I Ruined My Boyfriend’s Birthday in Mexico

Aaron is a simple man. He doesn’t ask for much and he tolerates my mood swings — what more could you ask for really? So the least I could do was plan the best day of our trip in Cancun on his actual birthday.

I’m still getting the hang of this whole dating thing so I’m trying to think what’s the appropriate amount of money to spend at this point in the relationship? How extra should I be? Stuff like that. Aaron really values experiences over objects so I’m thinking we could do something fun and unique. Naturally, I head over to google and search for “fun and unique things to do in Cancun, Mexico” — how clever, right?

I get these ads on the results for all kinds of websites. Scuba diving, parasailing, yada yada yada. He’s done all of these things and they’re all so basic and not unique. After reading a few blogs, I came across this boat tour, but what made it different was that it was clear on all sides, not just the bottom. Better yet, there was a link to a TikTok (my fave app on the planet). It looks cool, unique, fun and different. So I just popped my credit card information and clicked confirm. Let me tell you, I felt like the best fucking girlfriend on the planet after booking these tickets. Wow, I’m so thoughtful. He’s going to love this. A birthday to remember. I bet he’s never gone on one of these before.

Fast forward a few weeks to the actual trip. We get there, the room is nice, the resort is nice. The pool is great, the view is incredible. Absolute perfection. Then, it’s Aaron’s birthday. I was more pumped than he was because he wanted everything to be a surprise, so he had no idea what we were doing.

Side note: I get really nauseous all the time and my mom told me and Aaron to bring dramamine for me because I get sick like instantly. Aaron (that sweet angel) bought me some at the airport but trying to coordinate everything the day of his birthday for this stupid boat, I forgot to take the dramamine…

We get a cab from the resort to this marina thing that’s like 25 minutes away. The email said to get there 30 minutes before the start time and we were already 20 minutes late at this point. The cab driver said it was going to be 400 pesos and when we get there he’s like it’s more like 450 or something like that. Annoying, because we didn’t bring like any cash and they don’t take cards.

We pull up to the address and there’s like nothing there. Sick. We drive around a bit more and I see this tiny boat floating on the water. We show up to the place and it’s like a private home that’s empty and I guess they run this thing out of there? Odd. The guys are shocked to see us, which is strange considering we had a reservation. They look up the reservation and have nothing in their system. Awesome. They want us to wait for the next tour in 2 hours and invite us to hang out at this random house until then. No thank you, take us on the boat now.

So we hop on the boat. No dramamine. Massive life jackets. 2 workers plus Aaron and I sitting on opposite sides of the boat for “balance”. I’m like I weigh 6x as much as Aaron so idk what kind of balance you’re trying to achieve here but okay. So we take off. The guy giving the tour tells me he speaks English and then proceeds to give the tour in Spanish and expects me to translate everything to Aaron. We quite literally did not care about the tour, we just wanted to see all this marine life that was shown on the tiktok and on the website.

We’re on the boat and it’s windy as fuck. I’m looking straight down so I can see all the millions of fish and shit in the ocean and all I see is blue. Every kind of blue you can imagine but just blue. We probably saw 12 fish during the entire tour. Ok maybe that’s an exaggeration but I was expecting to see schools of fish kind of like on Finding Nemo, but that is not what we saw. Instead, the tour guide proceeds to ask me trivia questions about corals and sea weed. Like dude, I literally don’t care. I wanna see some freaking sharks and shit. Instead, this is literally all we saw the whole time:

The other worker, not the one “giving” the tour, was driving the boat and he was going so fast and then we would see an animal and he would try to reverse but the motor makes bubbles so when he would reverse, all we would see are the bubbles and it would scare the animal away (obviously). So he would go around in circles, forwards and backwards. I’m sure you can imagine I was turning blue in the face from the dizziness and nausea at this point.

But wait, this is the best part. I actually thought that Aaron was gonna break up with me at this point and throw me overboard into the water. Not that it would have been scary because clearly there were no animals in the freaking ocean. So they pull us out to the middle of the ocean and tell us we can take our life jackets off for some pictures. So we’re thinking oh you know, just a regular picture. Nope.

This man whips out a go-pro camera and starts giving directions like a photographer on America’s Next Top Model. Do this pose, stand here, look up, sit on the side, do this, do that. It was one of the most awkward things in the world and poor Aaron was trying to be such a good sport about it. It was honestly so cringey I couldn’t even look because I knew he wanted to kill me. Hahahahah. The guys wanted to sell these photos to us after the boat ride but there was no chance in hell I was giving them another dollar after not seeing any freaking animals and giving the tour myself in English.

We get off the freaking boat and leave as fast as possible. We don’t have enough cash to get a cab back to the resort so we start walking to see if we can get somewhere that is a bit more populated and closer to the resort. I was ready to walk for hours without a single complaint after making this man suffer through that atrocious boat ride on his birthday, but luckily he thought to ask some random taxi driver if he could take us back and let us get cash from our room when we got there and he agreed. Blessed be the lord because it was going to be a long and miserable walk back to the resort.

Thankfully, we made it back and paid the taxi driver. Back in all-inclusive land, we head straight for food and drinks because no amount of tequila was going to turn that experience around but we were sure as shit going to try. The day ended up being better ( I mean, it could not have been worse after the way it started!) because we ate at our favorite little restaurant and had drinks in the pool. By some miracle of God, Aaron didn’t break up with me and we’re still together. Though I’m not allowed to book excursions anymore, but that’s 100% okay with me. Let’s see if I can plan a better birthday surprise for his next birthday… It’s the thought that counts, right?

xx marnie