Daria Saville recounts travel nightmare from Mexico to Indian Wells

Daria Saville had a dream week at the Merida Open Akron, reaching her first WTA 500-level semifinal in seven years, but she soon was embroiled in a travel nightmare as she raced to the starting line for her first-round qualifying match at the BNP Paribas Open.

In getting from Merida, the largest city in southeastern Mexico, over to her next tournament in Palm Springs, Calif. on the west coast, the Aussie revealed that "everything that could’ve gone wrong, did" in a harrowing recap on Instagram.

First, Saville wrote on Tuesday, her scheduled Sunday flight from Merida to Dallas was subject to a three-hour delay, meaning she would've missed her connecting flight on to Palm Springs. Not willing to risk it, she canceled that flight, and instead, booked last-minute tickets on a west-bound flight from Merida to Leon with the low-cost Mexican airline Viva Aerobus, which would've put her onto what she described as a “fly-through” to Tijuana.

But two hours later, she arrived in Leon, in central Mexico, to find the airport closed due to local curfew, and her next flight canceled.

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"Chaos at the desk, but we got rebooked for 5:40 a.m. Monday (match day)," she said. "Got a hotel room, managed 2.5 hours of sleep, and then up at 3:30 am to head to the airport. Finally, smooth sailing to Tijuana."

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Saville's adventure wasn't over after she deplaned. For reasons unclear, she wrote that she "had to" rent an electric car, which had a low battery to boot. Her ride hung on (with photographic evidence to prove it) for the duration of the four-hour drive between Tijuana, just south of the U.S. border, and Indian Wells, and Saville made it to the court Monday night in time to face Jil Teichmann, in a match between two former Top 20 players.

"Fueled by adrenaline and coffee," Saville won from a set down, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, as the clock neared 11 p.m. local time. But soon, the crash came.

"Running on fumes and not feeling my best," she continued, she eventually lost in the second round of qualifying on Tuesday to Maria Lourdes Carle, 6-2, 6-1.

All that, just for less than two full days in Tennis Paradise?

"But hey, I signed up for this madness," she concluded. "So, we keep grinding."