The passengers on the one week cruise to Puerto Vallarta never imagined being adrift in the Pacific Ocean and having to be rescued by Mexican vessels before touching land four days after their vacation started.

    But that is exactly what happened to the 3,299 passengers and 1,167 crew members from Carnival Splendor, after a fire blew the engine room and left them without power on a ship at San Vicente Bay, 200 miles south of San Diego, California.

    Because of the power outage, the ship, waving the Panama Flag and weighing more than 113 tons, became adrift for several hours.

    Passengers were evacuated to the deck while the fire was controlled and they radioed for help. Once crew members verified there were no injuries and the fire was controlled everyone was allowed to go back to their rooms.

    The ship was scheduled to go around the Mexican Riviera and was just into their second day of the voyage when the fire started, and the ship was left with no hot water, no hot food, or phones.

    Hours later, a recording was televised by channel 8 in San Diego, where a cameraman got a hold of an image of some kind of unidentified object in the California Coast.

    This, along with the news of what had happened to the Carnival Cruise fueled a conspiracy theory going around in some websites, including , where it is claimed that the cruise was damaged by a Chinese submarine trying a new weapon called Subsonic Pulsar on for size.

    According to this theory, the attack had the double intent to try the new weapon and time the US response to the attack at a moment where the president was out of the country.

    The allegations have note even been addressed by authorities.

    Mexican Navy Capitan Carlos Humberto Carrillo Ufort, head of the Ensenada Port, —nearest to the vessel- was informed that the US Navy had sent a ship with food and water to the Splendor and three tugboats were sent from Ensenada to pull the ship to shore.

    Early Tuesday morning passengers first saw tugboat Chihuahua and the two others, Coral and Monterrey, reached the vessel on Wednesday.

    When Carnival spokespeople first talked about the rescue plans, they planned to have the ship taken to Ensenada where passengers and crew would disembark and go back to Long Beach by bus.

    The concern was safety during their journey to the border but plans were made for the Mexican Federal Police to escort the convoy of at least 90 buses traveling north on the Ensenada scenic road until arriving at the San Ysidro Port of Entry.

    But they didnt know how much of a challenge it would be to find 90 passenger buses with the required permits to transport people back and forth across the border.

    Ramón Inzunza Ramos, nicknamed “El Guaymas” has been the owner of Calibaja tours for the past 35 years. He was contacted by Carnival asking him to book his bus fleet with permits to work in California.

    “They wanted about 90 buses but in Baja state we could barely get to 25, —including my buses and some other carriers’ in Tijuana— with the right permits to operate in California” he said.

    The same situation seemed to be true in California, where it is uncommon for buses to have permits to go into Mexico, and those that had the permits had previously been booked.

    “This certainly qualifies as an emergency so I hope the Mexican government takes care of the tourism brought by Carnival, a company that has been arriving to Ensenada for the past 25 years, creating a good economic bust for the region” Inzunza said.

    Inzunza remembers a similar incident involving one of his boats over 20 years ago., when a ship arriving from San Diego to Ensenada with 500 passengers had to be sent back to San Diego without them or the crew.

    “Nobody had their ID´s on them, they had all left them on the boat. Some were third country nationals, and US authorities let them in and then checked their papers with a list, after escorting everyone to the ship back in San Diego” he recalled.

    In the end, Carnival made the decision not to take port in Ensenada but to tow the vessel back to San Diego with everyone on board. The ship is expected to arrive late Thursday or early Friday and by then, —conspiracy theories or not— travelers will be happier than ever to be back on land.