Was I part of a Kidnapping Plot?

Firstly mum will be reading this as she has subscribed to support me. Mum - I am fine, promise! I didn’t want that to stop me from telling this story though as it makes me chuckle in hindsight and is interesting to explore what was going on in my mind. I will put this in the self-discovery bucket of the experiment. For those that hadn’t noticed, I was in the Caribbean for the last few days. I met some friends when I got there, however, the departure to a new foreign country was on my own and the first time in a while, given I have been traveling with my fiancé for the last couple years. [Yes, it was terrible of me to go without him and I missed him :)] Bear in mind this story is coming from the girl who has lived in 2 other foreign countries on her own and travelled to Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria on her own - which makes it even more baffling! When I travel on my own, I have realised I tend to go on security overdrive in preparation for the trip. I can’t remember if this was always the case but I have definitely noticed this behaviour since I went through security training with work before I travelled to Africa. Sometimes maybe ignorance is bliss? Before I flew last week, I decided to check the airport taxi situation for my destination. It is widely known that the taxi at the airport is a popular place for scams - normally charging too much, or from my training in Africa - for kidnapping. We were always given the driver name and ID beforehand and told to check the driver’s ID before we got into the car. I’m not sure how I was drawing comparisons at this point with the two destinations but let’s see if you can help me piece this together. I checked online for this trip's destination to see if there were any helpful comments from fellow travellers or tips for picking up taxis, approximate distance, prices, if there was an official taxi company and if the hotel had any shuttle services. I asked around too. I came to the conclusion that I was better off booking transport via the hotel, just to be on the safe side. I called the hotel and spoke to someone who had a very strong Spanish accent. It took 26 mins to spell my first name and make sure he really did take down the right flight number. It was hard work but I felt ok that he said he would call me back the next day to confirm. The night before I left, as usual I was packing at the last minute and realised he had not called back. It was 11pm and I had to be up at 4am to get to the airport. My gut was still telling me that was the right thing to do at this stage, so to be sure I rang the hotel to confirm everything was in place. I got passed around a number of people and finally got through to someone who said they could help but we had a language barrier again. I wasn’t able to get across that I just wanted to check everything was set for my pick up so he proceeded to take my details again. Not knowing if I would now have two cars waiting for me I went a long with it as didn’t see another way to communicate. 21 mins later, trying to spell my name and give the flight number, the phonetic alphabet was also not helping either. I accepted my alternative Spanish name (at least i knew what name to look for) and he said he would call back within a few mins to confirm. I went to bed thinking that if he confirms before i go to sleep, great, if not I will have to resort to an airport taxi if I cannot see my name when I get to arrivals. At 1:30am I got woken up by a phone call - it was the guy at the hotel confirming the pick up. I was half asleep and didn’t think much of it except said yes to everything he said and hung up. I didn’t realize at the time he was calling me through WhatsApp nor how late it was. I woke up at 4am to a series of WhatsApp messages from Francisco at the hotel. He had been texting me from the moment he called me at 1:30am through to 4am. 1:34am - he introduces himself 1:40am - he sends me two photos of himself from different angles 2:20am - he repeats the flight number 2:47am - he asks me for my full name 3:40am - he sends a picture of my flight off a computer screen logged onto the internet 4:10am - he’s asking for my full name again 4:30am - he asks for a photo of me for the driver When I woke up at 4am, the strange dreams didn't help, my mind went into full demon of fear interpretation to the above messages: 1. This guy has my mobile number and is abusing it by sending me text messages obsessively through the night 2. Why would he call through WhatsApp with a large 5* resort, surely they have professional phone lines to use? 3. Why is he asking me to reconfirm after I gave him all the details on the phone the night before? 4. Why is he sending me pictures of himself when he is not the one picking me up? 5. Why is he asking for pictures of me, that’s not normal service I’ve seen before and feels uncomfortable. 6. He knows I am traveling on my own At this moment in the early hours of the morning I had convinced myself that there was a possibility he had arranged a car to pick me up that was going to be hijacked and if i went along with his plan, answered all his questions and sent photos of myself I was going to end up in a dark unknown corner of the island. Who knows who Francisco really contacted to arrange the taxi and why he obsessively needed all those details again along with photos. He was still online writing to me as I was getting ready. I was freaking out and didn’t know what to do. I called someone in a sensible timezone to check if I was going crazy and they agreed it was a ‘bit’ strange. I needed to rush and get myself to the airport so I decided to block 'Francisco's' WhatsApp number for the moment and get myself to the airport. I texted my friend who had already reached the resort and asked her to cancel the taxi for me when she woke up, I mustn’t make direct contact with him now and I will settle for the ‘anonymous’ airport taxi. By the time I got to JFK for departure, I had obviously woken up a bit, warmed up for the day, it was now daylight and I was surrounded by people. I re-read all those messages and how dramatic it had felt and started to feel a little embarrassed. It really didn’t seem so bad as my mind had calculated it, all skewed out of proportion. Where did that demon of a story come from?! I had somehow put all my fears into one basket and created a worst case scenario of the unknown setting my pulse rate extremely high. I ended up sticking to the plan, to cancel the hotel taxi and find a local one at the airport. As I landed at the airport, some of those demons were still there. Many people were waving taxi signs at me and I had to pick one and trust them. I decided to take one big deep breath, destroy the demons and convinced myself this was now an adventure and I was going to go on the ride. I followed the taxi sign and got in a random car. I took note of his make, model and colour. Unfortunately couldn't catch the number plate. I switched on my data to track the drivers route on google just to be safe :) and guess what...I arrived safely to the the hotel and everything was absolutely fine. On my departure at the end of the trip, I did actually try to find the 'real' Francisco in person, but unfortunately he was off shift. Maybe a good thing as that could have been an awkward conversation and exchange of feedback. So what is my self-discovery conclusion to all of this? I had accentuated my fear, which triggered my body reaction to fear by building this crazy story in my mind that did not exist in reality. Doing this in any situation could impact what we do, the decisions we make, how we perceive things and our performance. This is not always a good thing and can be very damaging to us. I could’ve paralyzed myself into not going at all. I believe it is actually healthy to have a bit of fear so your rational mind can come in when you really are in a dangerous situation and you can recognise it. What we shouldn’t let it do is rule our life. If i hadn’t have got to the island, i would have never been able to see the picture perfect views or had any of the experiences I have had. What I also realised is that I hadn’t travelled a while on my own so felt rusty. The more we put ourselves out of our comfort zones, and practice doing things outside of our comfort zones and trust ourselves whilst doing it - the more we give ourselves space to grow and experience wonderful new things...and discover our passions :)