Due to the nature of the experiences, the authors of the following stories have requested to remain anonymous.

Beaches, booze and taking a break.

Like grandparents flying to Florida for the winter, its become a tradition for many university graduating classes to head south in big groups to warmer climates for their Reading Week vacations. Sometimes, those trips are simply a chance to get a tan and take a break. Other times, they’re something else altogether.

To get a glimpse into this mass exodus, The Journal asked some spring breakers from a group of Queen’s students to share their experiences. Included below are some of the most outstanding anecdotes, told in the travellers’ own words.

First and last

Everyone was drinking at around 5 a.m. before the flight to Punta Cana, which is why this story is all a little blurry for me.

This was the last memory I can recall, and the next thing I knew I woke up in a bedroom. Thinking I was at my resort, I walked to the window to open it and instantly realized that it wasn’t my resort. There were wild dogs and men walking by with machine guns and I quickly realized I was in the favelas of Bavaro, the Dominican suburbs.

Walking to the lobby with a dead phone battery, I asked the hotel staff if they had a phone charger. No one spoke English, so I had to act out what a phone charger was, and luckily they had one. They didn’t have running tap water, but they had iPhone chargers.

After being propositioned by another guest in the lobby, I just wanted to find my friends and find out where I was. I turned my phone on to receive messages from the staff who organized our trip stating that I had been removed from the trip for my actions at the resort today.

If you are wondering what these actions may have been, I later found out that I broke the seal — debatably on another human.

But having no idea what those actions were at the time, I sat there wondering what I’d done and what I was going to do. When a lady showed up the next morning, she gave me two options, to fly home that day, or to cab to another resort.

I instantly decided to cab to another resort, trusting a friend who took me in. We grabbed lunch and threw my bags into his room. And this is where one of the best weeks of my life began.

Two too many

I went back to a guy’s room only to find that I’d previously wheeled both of his other roommates earlier in the year. I stayed and attempted to sleep, then very quietly sprinted out of the room at 4:30 a.m.

A Lord of the Flies experience

It’s 3:30 a.m. and two of three roommates return home from a great night, both confused but pleased with their decisions thus far.

This was only the beginning of the night’s events, as the room quickly turned into a scene from Lord of the Flies. The third roommate stumbled in with two girls. He’d thrown up on the bus and couldn’t find his way home.

“We needed to take care of him,” they said. “He was throwing up everywhere. Could you guys please put him to bed?” Too drunk ourselves to come up with a better solution, we locked him on the balcony.

The girls panicked, noticing that maybe his two drunken idiots of roommates weren’t in the best state to take care of him. They let him back in and begged for him to be put to bed. Instead, he took a shower.

As if on cue, four buddies rolled up to the room, only to find their naked friend refusing any sort of assistance, yelling, “I know my body.”

As he stepped into the shower, he was greeted with three bottles of Pepsi and 7-up poured over him. In our drunken states, we rationalized that sugar is good for your skin, so he accepted the drenching.

The water was deemed too hot, so he gets sunscreen sprayed all over him so he won’t get burnt.

After all of this, he decided he needed some rest and relaxation. So he filled a tub with hot water, only to puke in it four times.

After draining, he fell asleep in the tub, cold and uncomfortable. We were woken up two hours later by the sound of a running tap.

A drunken man passed out in a tub isn’t a good idea, so we got him to move to his bed. Not more than an hour later, he was found star-fished on the floor, after creating a Lake Ontario of urine in his bed.

We thanked him for having such a great spirit and embracing Punta for what it is, one devastating experience.

Getting Lei’d

I took one of the themed nights a little too literally and lost my virginity at the Hawaiian-themed “get lei’d” party.

Sunday Funday

Two friends — let’s call them A and D — arrived in Punta Cana for grad trip on the Sunday afternoon a little hungover. A had convinced D that pounding a litre of wine would be a good idea before the plane landed.

A and D were somehow able to check into their hotel, sit through the orientation brief and find their way to their room without making too much of a scene. News of a beach party reached them, and both A and D decided that it was necessary to make their presence felt.

Here’s where the story begins to get a little fuzzy, as both A and D had seriously miscalculated their livers’ ability to metabolize the gutter water labeled ‘alcohol’ being served.

Fast-forward an unknown amount of time later, A and D both come to in their room. D has self-identified with Winnie the Pooh — he doesn’t have pants or boxers on but somehow still has his pastel Ralph Lauren Polo on. 

D realizes the door is wide open, but nothing has been stolen. D looks down at his hand and realizes that the knuckles on his right hand are covered in coagulated blood, which would explain why the door handle is also covered in blood. A decides its time to slap on some sunscreen, pound some water and hit the beach.

A and D both spend the late morning and early afternoon gathering what dignity they have left. In the afternoon, A realizes he has forgotten something he wanted in the room, and heads back to grab it. A reaches the room, only to find it looking like the set of Narcos and four security guards are standing in and around the balcony.  

Moments after, security explains to A that his room was going to be financially liable for its actions against the floor. Both A and D attempt to blame one another, but to no avail, as neither can remember the previous evening.

Dancing on my own

I was in complete bliss because I’d just spent an entire drunken afternoon in the sun with my best friends. I went back to my room to shower and prep for the night.

I was alone in my room so I decided to have a couple more drinks, blare some music and hop in the shower. I was dancing so hard while shampooing my hair that I lost my balance and fell out of the bathtub onto the tile floor, hitting my head on the counter and ripping the shower curtain down in the process.

I got a massive bump on my head and a bruise on my ass from the incident, proud battle scars of a spring break well spent.

Seeing double

One of my friends managed to make it all the way back to our room with two similar looking iPhones, thinking they were both hers — logical, I know. When she returned the phone to it’s rightful owner the next day, they deemed her a hero for “finding” their missing phone.

Coconuts

Some friends and I were hanging out on a hotel balcony one afternoon when we noticed a male receiving oral pleasuring from a female on a balcony below.

Seeing the humorous situation take place just metres below our feet, we erupted in laughter. Embarrassed by our reaction, the young man receiving the pleasuring decided to retaliate.

I saw something in my peripheral flash and then felt a sudden jolt of pain run across my face. Concussion-like symptoms ensued and when the doctor asked what had happened, I could only explain that a blowjob resulted in coconut-related head trauma.