Road Warriors : When Mates Travel Together, Love Takes a Vacation

MAYBE, I’ll swim with the whales tomorrow,” my husband says. Is he out of his mind? I wonder. How will I bring his remains back to his parents? I wonder. What am I doing in this dark, far-from-immaculate hotel room in Ciudad Constitucion in Baja California?

What I’d hoped would be a romantic Mexican holiday is turning into the relationship equivalent of that automotive endurance classic--the Baja Torture Test. Travel broadens the mind, but it also broadens the differences between even the most compatible couples. For example, my husband’s wayfaring fantasy role model leans toward Amundsen mushing his huskies toward the South Pole, while mine is more like Cleopatra lounging on her barge floating majestically down the Nile.

We are not the only mates with travel conflicts. “I throw running clothes, a pair of jeans and a change of underwear into a suitcase, and I’m gone,” says my friend Don. “Meanwhile, Linda is calling Bekins. She won’t go anywhere without the whole closet.”

My friend Claire won’t even pack. “Fred and I don’t travel well,” she declares. “I only like to go places where they speak English so I can be in control. And he likes to venture out into The Great Unknown and be lost. There’s nothing I hate more than that.”

Maybe Claire should talk to Joseph A. Broger, a Pacific Palisades travel agent, who routinely acts as a marriage counselor. “The artistry of my job is to ferret out disagreements in the first interview, long before the first reservations are made,” he explains. “I let both parties have their say, and then I try to find a travel feature that satisfies both. It’s not as difficult as it seems.”

Recently, he saved a couple from marital hell in the Himalayas. “She was dead set to go on a trek in the high mountains of Nepal,” Broger recalls. “And he just didn’t want that. So I found a situation where there was a short, very easy walk of about four days rather than the two-week march. She’s happy because she gets the exposure she was looking for. And he’s happy he doesn’t have to walk so much.”

Unfortunately, Broger didn’t plan our trip. I had no objections when Duke suggested that we go see the California gray whales wintering in Bahia Magdalena. But I naively assumed that the whale-watching expedition he had in mind was a pleasant day cruise aboard a large, bright and shiny white boat with an observation deck, free margaritas and maybe even a snack bar.

I was wrong. “I’m going to find a fisherman,” Duke announced, as we drove into Puerto San Carlos along a dirt road littered with broken Corona beer bottles and overturned rusting car hulks. He stopped by a ripped tent fronted by a colossal mound of scallop shells. I watched in horror, anxiously chanting my travel mantra, “Be a good sport,” as he negotiated with men who didn’t look like staff members of the Princess Cruises line.

“It’s all set,” Duke reported happily when he returned to the car. “Ramiro will take us out tomorrow morning in his ponga .” What’s a ponga ? “I don’t know,” Duke admitted. “But don’t worry. It’ll be fun.”

One thing you learn when you’re traveling with your mate is that your definitions of fun may not be the same. My friends Annie and Jeremy recently returned from a monthlong vacation in Europe. “It wasn’t a let’s-go-visit-the-museum trip; it was more a cows-in-the-country trip,” says Jeremy, who planned the journey. “But Annie mostly wanted to buy shoes. We hit every shoe store in every city in Europe. She was looking for the perfect pair of black flats. She never found them.”

“He hated to shop,” Annie agrees. “He liked going down streets that went to nowhere.” But not exactly to nowhere. “The area had to be listed in his bible, the Michelin guide.” Not surprisingly, Annie and Jeremy are no longer living together. “When two people go off on a trip before they get married, it’s a good bet they’ll either get married or it will be the end of the relationship,” says psychologist Gary Emery, director of the Los Angeles Center for Cognitive Therapy. “When you’re traveling, there are so many reasons to get negative.”

Like what? “In normal day-to-day life, there are not that many decisions to be made,” Emery says. “But when you’re traveling, there are countless decisions: where to buy a stamp, where to make a phone call, how to talk to the desk clerk. And every decision is a potential conflict.”

Don’t I know it. Take the other night in San Jose del Cabo. We pulled up to a luxurious beach hotel, after a “relaxing” seven-hour drive, during which a kamikaze vulture narrowly missed our windshield. My heart swelled with hope as the bellhop showed us a sunny spacious room with an ocean view, a deep bathtub and no strange stains on the king-size bedspread. “Let’s look around some more,” Duke said. “We can do better.”

Better? We wound up in a subterranean closet with a sink in the shower and a view of two water heaters. “Give me one good reason that we couldn’t stay in that beautiful place,” I shouted.

“I once stayed there with someone else,” Duke confessed.

Maybe he should swim with the whales tomorrow.

But the next day, the air is too cold and the sea is too rough for swimming. However, it doesn’t stop us from boating. I grit my teeth as we climb into what looks like a heavily patched bathtub with a motor. There are no life jackets or oars in the boat. “Be a good sport,” I chant as my husband instructs Ramiro to get as close to the whales as he possibly can.

Still, I have to admit that seeing a gray barnacled fluke rising gracefully over the waves 10 feet away is a breathtaking experience. “Honey, thanks for bringing me here,” I say sincerely. “Where are we going next?”

Duke puts his arm around me to stop me from shivering and asks, “Would you mind if we checked into a romantic hotel on the beach?”