"Now just let me get through customs and baggage" I prayed.

Well... wouldn't you know it... I got flagged.

"WHY ARE YOU TRAVELING HERE ON YOUR OWN? You're a white girl!"
The security guard and I were sitting across from each other at a table while he proceeded to yell at me in the interrogation room.

Hmm.. Good question, sir.

Not in the mood to party with this guy I was rolling over in my head how to get out of this mess.

"Well, my boyfriend did something not nice to me and I needed some space from him so I am alone and I am just kind of hoping to get to my hotel."

"How long are you staying?"

"I have my exit flight information in my phone."

"Do you have any drugs with you?"

"No, why would I bring drugs with me?"

"Bring out the dogs!"

And cue a bunch of attack dogs just to make me even more uncomfortable.

...

My head hurts recounting this to you. Imagine being sick from flying, drinking like a fisherman and now being yelled at by a customs agent all with a huge language barrier overhead.

They went through my bags, did an information check with my passport and my flight details, asked me the same thing over and over, until finally, they decided I was in fact NOT a drug mule.

So now, regaining my freedom, I was on to finding my way to the apartments. I had an address and that was pretty much it for help to get there. I had my phone but no SIM card so no way of calling and I don't speak Spanish but this was all I had from my new employers... (I figured out why they gave me so little details later on...)

(Present me can't even believe the lack of planning on past me's part.)

Cabs are easy enough to catch at an airport so I found a driver who spoke enough English for me to tell him where I wanted to go.

He kept telling me we could wait for my friends to which I had to keep explaining, I had none with me. Whenever we finally got that communicated he looked at me in horror.

"Not good travel alone lady." And shook his head violently.

Ok, well, if I wasn't scared at all before, that tequila wearing off and everyone's concern about me being alone was surely doing the trick. Also having my passport taken for the whole time they were deciding whether or not to let me into the country made me a little bit on the uneasy side.

I was shaking, putting my luggage into the driver's hands, and getting into the car. I had never been outside of North America alone before and I probably shouldn't have drank so much on the way down. (Ahhh hindsight.)

The driver started driving and I had no bearings having never been there before so for all I knew he was driving me to his house to kidnap me. He kept muttering things about me being 'alone' and 'not good.'

Finally we pulled up to a gate with a security guard and the driver started speaking in Spanish. They both looked at me, looked at each other and started laughing. I was now pretty dazed from all of the travel and tequila and was not amused by any of this.

"What's going on?" I asked the driver clearly annoyed.

"You get out here." He said.

"Where is here?" It certainly wasn't what I was expecting based on what we had talked about in the Skype calls.

"This is the address. You stay here." He was now pointing to the address I had given him and asking me for money.

Oh great... currency... I forgot.

Well, that'll be in USD then, with an enormous upcharge because you, dear Heart were unprepared.

...

I finally managed to meet up with Emily. Let me tell you I skipped over a long period of time trying to figure out how to get a hold of her.

She was just as she looked on video chat, kind, petite like me, bubbly and excited. She whisked me away into the compound and told the security guard to let me in next time he saw me, that I was with her.

She brought me up to her room which was now in hindsight not too bad but at the time, pretty alarming. There were many families around, doors open, Spanish being yelled, TVs blaring various sounds, children screaming...

The culture shock was hitting me hard.

Emily told me I could keep my things there until my room was ready and showed me around. She was a new mother, so her brand new baby was on a blanket on the floor, EDM music was floating through the room and some pizza boxes were hanging out on the table. Something didn't feel right.

I judge situations a lot based on the energy I feel and I was feeling pretty "sketched out" but I blamed the hangover and sat down, connected to the internet and tried to find some comfort in having arrived.

A couple of hours later, she brought me across the courtyard and showed me my room. It was a compact single bed, in a small, hardly lit room. There was also another bed beside mine. I started to wonder if my "private accommodations" were not going to be so private.

I decided to get cleaned up, maybe that would help perk me up. Emily was now down by the pool so I hopped in the shower and to my surprise there was no hot water! But she told me specifically there would be hot water... another strike.

I decided to make a mental note of it, not wanting to make a big deal and went to the kitchen to get some of the free filtered water I was told would be available. Not there. Weird. They must not have everything ready for me yet.

I knew I should let everyone know I made it safe and sound so I tried to connect to the wifi.

Hmmm... It didn't work. K, seriously WT*?

Now I started to wonder what was going on. When I agreed to come, I went through a detailed check list of what to expect and so far most of that was coming up severely short on their end.

At that time I was the most passive, unaggressive person you would ever hope to meet. I avoided confrontation like the plague and would not step on your toes if you were putting them directly under my feet!

I put on my swim suit and went down to the pool to find Emily, telling myself it would all work out in time. I mentioned these issues to her casually and she just smiled and said she would let Kyle know (we haven't met Kyle yet but he was the owner of all of this, her business partner and her boyfriend's friend.)

She told me to just lay back and relax so I did. The sun was warm, it was a beautiful day, things would be just fine.

Fast forward.

Kyle lived in the same apartment as Emily, her boyfriend James, and their baby. Their apartment was where the internet was and since mine wasn't connecting and since they weren't ready to have me start working, I was pretty bored being all alone in my room so I would often go over to their apartment to use their wifi.

Kyle really didn't like that (even though he was supposed to be providing me with wifi) it started to become uncomfortable and being too chicken to say anything, I began walking across town, half an hour each way to go to an internet cafe.

Walking in the hot climate there for any length of time requires minimal clothing or maximum sweating. I tried the sweating option and it was impossibly unbearable so that meant I would be walking alone, through the local zone in shorts and usually a tank top/t-shirt, carrying my laptop to the cafe, standing out like a sore thumb.

I swear to you I am not exaggerating to prove my point, the culture is different than mine, almost every male I passed would either make a sound or say something either in English or Spanish and it made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. Then there were the taxi drivers who would drive slowly beside me asking me on repeat if they could drive me where I was going even after
I learned how to politely decline...

I kept my head up but it wasn't helping me feel comfortable or safe. I told Emily about it and she just looked at me very seriously and said,

"That's the culture here, just ignore it."

I was wondering why I was even there. They hired me to work for them but they weren't asking me to do anything. I spent most of my day walking back and forth between the cafe to use the wifi and eat (they had told me meals would be included but they most definitely were not.)

A couple of days in of them telling me every day the club was almost finished, we went to have a look at it. It was being built in a cave and honestly, it was pretty cool. I could see it being popular so I decided to be more patient, maybe the workers were really taking longer than they expected.

Then something happened. Emily and I were hanging out, we were taking the dog and baby for a walk on the beach when we saw some rum-filled coconuts for sale. She got us some and we were sipping, laughing... before you know it buying a bottle of rum and coconuts to keep the party going back at her place!

Alcohol does this thing where it acts as an inhibitor and people start saying and doing things they normally otherwise wouldn't. This is where I started to realize things might not be as they seemed.

She told me she didn't know why things were different than what I was promised and that Kyle was the one in charge of all that. She said she really felt bad about it all but didn't know what to do.

Her and I bonded a lot during those hours of consuming and ordering another bottle of rum to the house before anyone got home.

They had this guy on speed dial who would pick up whatever they wanted from the store and bring it to the apartment so we ordered a whole host of drunken mishaps- chips, pizza, more rum, gum... The me now shudders at what I was putting into my body.

Whenever Kyle and James got home from the bar and saw how drunk we were, they were not so happy campers and started coming down really hard on Emily for letting loose and not doing "what she needed to do" whatever that was.

I felt really bad for her, but we ended it there. The guys had to go back out and I was pretty tired so I went back to my room with a bunch of new questions.

Now that Em had had a taste of freedom, it seemed like she wanted more. Her and I walked down to their favourite restaurant together for dinner the next night and before you know it, we were deep into the rum again, sharing stories and becoming friends. I could tell that she was feeling really alone and needed someone to hang out with. I was feeling really hurt and needed to let some steam off so we decided to go out to the bar.

At the bar, talking to all the locals that lived there, I realized something was up. I didn't know what but I became well aware of the fact that drugs were rampant and most people seemed to be on them.

Emily told me not to worry about it and explained that drugs were being trafficked through from Colombia on boats stopping in, so it was kind of a normal, popularized, accepted thing around there.

Well that was enough excitement for me, so I made my way back home.

The next day they decided we should take the party yacht out for it's first run. That meant that Emily and I would be working it and since I had come there to work, despite being hungover, I was ready to make some money. I had been spending a lot more than I thought I would based on the unmet agreements of my contract.

I had been told many times that this party yacht was a really great boat, lots of publicity, everyone was all about it and that it would be a way to make tons of money from the partying students.

This is what I expected based on what I was being sold:

Let me tell you what happened instead of that.

Emily and I got ready and set up the ummm... fishing boat as in NOT YACHT and a group of maybe 15 kids climbed on board.

We took off into the sea and I felt like I was going to be sick. The waves were too much for me. I questioned if we should have even been out there in that kind of water-turbulence! Em decided we should have a few shots to loosen up. They had this rum-infused-wood stuff, I can't remember what it was but we decided to start drinking that.

The kids were having a blast, jumping off the boat, now we were jumping off the boat... and we were pretty drunk and not making any money so we decided to at least have fun with it.

In the end, we made $5 US between the two of us. We went out for dinner and before I knew it everything went black around me.

Oh it's not over yet.. we're still getting to the best parts.

Stay tuned for part 3 to find out why my world went black and what happened next!