Making and Breaking Friends on Caye Caulker Part 2 of 2

This is part two of this story.  Read Part 1 here.

It wasn’t my most graceful social exit, but the brilliant thing about traveling alone is that at anytime you can just leave. So I did.

Once I was on the street and out of the sight of the bar, I realized my short-sightedness. Jesus had shown me the hotel. He would surely know where I was staying and which way I would walk home. Plus, he had a golf cart, while I was walking barefoot (my sandal strap broke earlier in the day). If I wasn’t comfortable hanging out with him in the bar, I certainly wasn’t prepared to have him find me walking alone, on a part of the island that was not only quiet but deserted and dark. So I ran.

Looking back now, that was a pretty bad idea. About half way to my cabin, I nearly collapsed in pain. I had managed to hit one of the few rocks on the entire island with the tip of my foot. “Oh,” I thought, “so this is what breaking a toe feels like.”

Annoyed with myself, I hobbled back to the cabin, locking the door behind me, closing the drapes and heading to the shower to rinse off the blood.

I cursed myself in the shower for being so stupid and over reacting. It wasn’t broken, but I had a pretty good cut on the tops of three of my toes, and I would later lose a toenail–completely unnecessary collateral damage.

Then I heard a knock. “Christine?”

Oh no. I became aware of my heart beating. I held my breath. I had never had anyone follow me home before. Whatever gut feeling I had to leave the bar and then run home, was now telling me not to open the door. I sat on the toilet, and watched the blood pool and drip down my foot like a melting candle. He checked every window.

“Christine?”

He knocked on the door. He would go quiet for a few minutes then do it again. I looked at my cell phone– fifteen minutes had gone by. He was crossing the line from overzealous to a little scary. Was he trying to coax me out to hurt me? Could this possibly be friendly at this point? If a woman runs away from you, locks herself in her cabin and ignores you for 15 minutes, is this not clear enough? He stopped again. I waited few more minutes, then convinced that he had left, limped over to the bed and collapsed.

“Christine?”

I closed my eyes. I knew he couldn’t get in. I knew I couldn’t open my door to tell him off. For the first time on my travels, I was fully aware of my vulnerability as a woman. After 5 minutes, he left again for good. I was furious at him.

The next day I took a taxi to and from my hotel. I spent the day at the Barrier Reef Sports Bar, taking advantage of their free wifi and the ocean breeze. I played trivia that night with some tourists. I got a ride back to my room and felt pretty sure that the Jesus incident was behind me, just another random encounter. I was wrong.

At two in the morning I woke in a sitting position. I had the distinct impression someone had just been talking to me. I was startled. Was there someone in my room?

In that split second moment of waking, I saw a man. “Christine?”

I screamed. I was still sleepy and couldn’t figure out what was going on. Three short screams shot out of me in a panicked reflex. It was horror movie screams. Screams I never knew I was capable of, nor could I reproduce now. I have never been so hysterical. In that moment of waking up, I was sure he was standing in my room talking to me. He was in my room and something very bad was going to happen.

I woke enough to realize he wasn’t there, but standing outside looking into the window, just 1 foot from my bed. The windows were open, with just angled wooden shutters and a curtain between us. The light in the courtyard backlit him and when he spoke, it was unmuffled, like he was in the room with me.

“What do you want!” I screamed.

I would never find out.  He ran away. I heard a neighborhood dog start barking a moment later, as he passed.

My heart was thumping in my chest, and I sat there in awe. I was wide awake now, fueled on adrenaline, listening for sounds of him coming back. I heard people stirring in the cabins around me, someone coughed, but no one came to see what had happened.

I never saw him again. But the ghost of that night, hung over me for several days. I kept running over what had happened, trying to decide if it was a mistake to interact with people. Surely Jesus didn’t intend to scare me, more likely it was just a misguided booty call. And the fact that he woke me from deep sleep is the only reason I was so frightened that night. But as much as I could rationalize his behavior– drunk, persistent, bold with tourists who routinely leave after a week, perhaps a little clueless– it left me with this uncomfortable residual feeling.

The next morning, I was invited to spend a day on someone’s sailboat. I declined! These were people I had hung out with all week, and they raved about it later. Instead I played it safe, keeping to myself and working.

Eventually I shook off that feeling– I met a Rastafarian at the Split. He told me about “wind snow”. They don’t have “snow snow” on the Caye, but they have “wind snow”, that chill of a cool breeze, once you’ve adapted to island temperatures. I’m pretty sure he made that up, but he was charming. He didn’t try to take me home. He didn’t escalate contact. We talked for an hour. He used to live in Chicago, Canada and Jamaica. I was glad to learn about him and his life. He had traveled all over and liked Caye Caulker the best. I told him I was really starting to like it too.