Poor girl didn’t even get to surf these perfect waves. Photo: Trevor Murphy
I knew this was going to happen. I knew the moment he asked me if I was staying in room four.
“Are you staying alone or with Kayla?” the Costa Rican server questioned further.
“Oh no, I’m staying at a hotel down the street,” Kayla interrupted our conversation. I cringed.
I just met Kayla just four hours earlier. She was a 30-year-old professor at a university in Southern California and had been traveling by herself around South America for the past month. We instantly bonded over being from the Los Angeles area and both traveling alone.
The server walked away. I started to panic.
“How did he know I was in room four? And now he knows I’m alone! Why would you tell him that?” I shouted in a whisper voice.
“He needed to know your room for the bill. And Lindsey, stop worrying. Honestly. I’ve been here for a few days. Costa Rica is safe. You’re fine.”
I took a deep breath in and decided to enjoy the rest of the dinner with the three people I’d met so far–Kayla and a newly married couple. Regardless, it was still in the back of my mind. I paid in cash. He didn’t need my room number. Am I just being dramatic? Nothing would happen to me the first night, right? Stop thinking about it.
After two hours of sharing life stories and watching the three amigos get drunk while sipping my virgin piña coladas, I decided to head back to my room and get ready for bed. Everyone else went to a bar down the street. We had a 5am wake up call the next day, and I had been awake for over 24 hours straight. I needed sleep.
Before getting into bed, I wrote my mom telling her all about my first day in Costa Rica. Only the positive things, of course. I wanted to call her, but I made sure not to get an international phone plan setup for my trip so I could be as disconnected as possible from my life back at home. For the first time ever, I wanted to shed all tethers of the modern world and just unplug.
I hit send and closed my computer. I turned off the lamp on my nightstand and tucked myself in. I can’t believe I’m actually here. My first time out of the United States at 23 years old.
Since I was a little girl, it had always been my dream to take a surf trip to some place tropical and out of the country. I just never thought I’d end up doing it alone. I really wanted to go so I used my college graduation money from my grandfather to book a flight to Costa Rica and signed up for the Witch’s Rock surf tour.
I couldn’t get myself to fall asleep for awhile. I was still so freaked out by the server. He knows what room I’m in. Why did she have to tell him which room I’m in? What if he tries to get in here?
I instantly get out of my bed and look out my window. I can see the bar and a few of the restaurant staff from here but not the server. Before I got back in my bed, I left a little crack in the drapes just in case I needed to look outside again for some reason. Paranoia at its finest.
Roughly 30 minutes later I was able to finally fall asleep. My sleep was short-lived.
I shot up in my bed. I heard something. Was it in my dream or did something wake me up? I wait for the noise again.
There it is! Holy shit!
I snatch my phone off the nightstand and shine the screen light in the direction of the noise toward the hotel room door. The sound stops. As quietly as possible, I jump out of bed and tip toe to the crack I left in the drapes. Because it’s pitch black in my room, whatever or whoever it is can’t see me. I can only see them.
I know what I heard. It sounded like a key going into the lock from the outside of my door. I know it wasn’t in my dream. It was real. So, I wait and watch.
A minute goes by, and then my worst nightmare happens. I see it. An eye meets my eye. Whoever it is is looking right into my room from the little crack in the drapes. JESUS. I don’t know how I was able to hold in my scream, but I ducked under my window and started panicking. What do I do? Is he going to take me? Is he going to kill me? Why did I come here alone? Why on earth didn’t I get a service plan for my phone?
To this day, I still can’t explain why I made this next move but I opened my hotel room door and started screaming at the top of my lungs for help. There was no one outside my door anymore, but I instantly saw two older men, who I flew in with that day, running toward me.
Through my hyperventilation and screams, I try to tell them what just happened. To make things even worse, both of them were wasted drunk.
“Th-th-the server just tr-tr-tried to break into my r-r-oom!” I could barely stutter out a sentence.
