As I stepped out from the big white van, I breathed in the air. It felt so good transitioning from the icy, snowy, cold weather of Chicago to the crisp, hot, sunny atmosphere of Huatulco, Mexico. We were greeted with an icy cold drink that chilled my throat. As we kept walking up the grand marble entrance of the hotel, I nearly passed out because it was so late. The sky was black and the moon was out. You could see all the stars in the sky shining brightly. It was so pretty.

After we checked in, I remember falling asleep as soon as we stepped into the room. I remember there being two big beds that had white linens and the ocean was right outside our bedroom. The next morning when I woke up, I made a small decision that would affect me for good.

As I left the room early in the morning to go get breakfast, I ran into my older cousin Kevin. My entire mom’s side of the family was there which made twenty five of us and he was my mom’s sister’s son. We walked to breakfast together and the aroma of breakfast filled our noses. We could smell the sausage and the cheese in the omelets being fried up on the massive grill, but all I ate was a little box of cereal. The cereal was very crunchy and you could hear it popping in your mouth every bite you took. After breakfast I walked over to the pool where I saw my Uncle George. My Uncle George is very tall and has black short hair that goes just past his ears.

I walked over to him and he greeted me saying, “Well hello Holly. Guess what we’re going to do today?”

I said anxiously, “What?!” He said in reply, “Your father and I planned an ATV trip and were leaving now. Do you want to come?” I said with much hesitation, “Uh...sure?”

I’m not much of a risk taker and I was super skeptical of what this day would bring. I set my fears aside for a day and opted to go with; so we packed a couple things and we got into another big white van to take us to the ATV tour shop.

On the way there I counted how many people were coming with us. I counted my two brothers, my three oldest cousins, my uncle and my dad, and my cousin’s girlfriend. Since I was not old enough to ride an ATV by myself I wrote with my cousin’s girlfriend Meghan.

When we got to the place it was very run down. It was about the size of my bedroom and there were no doors, it was three concrete walls, and blue tarps were hanging all over. I got a little scared but when we hopped on the ATV’s the fear all went away. We plummeted through the rugged, sandy, tree filled forest. We followed this coffee brown trail that was only about six feet wide. On both sides of the trail there were trees that went to the sky. I felt like a tiny mouse. We went over bumps and I would bounce up and down and grip on to the handlebars for my life as I yelled, “ahhhhhh!!!!”

We headed back to the starting point, but before we could get there we had to pass a few obstacles. First, we had to go through a construction zone where we had to hold the ATV trigger down as hard as we could to get over a ten foot high limp of sand. The construction machine’s beeping noise rang in my ear like a bee’s buzzing and it was very irritating. After that we got to zoom as fast as we could down a straight away gravel path that was about two whole miles until we returned to the ATV shop.

On our way back to our hotel it was already 6:00 P.M and I was exhausted! I couldn’t wait to dive into bed and have a relaxing vacation for six more days. I was so happy I had decided to go on this ATV trip. I was skeptical at first because of the danger and risk of it, but I was extremely happy with my decision. Making this decision taught me to always take risks, because you will learn something new about yourself.