“Now I was in Nicaragua, still with no shoes, only a small bit of food, a return bus ticket, and a fake hundred dollar bill.” Photo: Ricky Lesser.
“Ven conmigo,” said the officer on the moped. He had me by the arm, his gloved hand squeezing the crook of my elbow. Mirrored aviators hid his eyes and a black and white helmet sat on his head, the chinstrap tightened just below his lower lip. A well-kempt mustache dropped off the corners of his mouth and tickled the top of the strap. It looked like it would be annoying, like a fly fluttering around your mouth. He was dressed in pressed and starched olive green, his boots shined so well the hot Nicaraguan sun reflected off them.
“Ven conmigo,” he repeated, negotiating me through the crowd of tourists trying to cross the border into Costa Rica. He was trying to pull me towards the border police station. I pulled away slightly, testing his resolve. He gunned his moped and almost yanked me off my feet.
“VEN CONMIGO!” he roared. Resolve tested. Resolve strong. With trembling legs, I ven conmigo-ed.
Four days earlier, I had traveled by bus from Costa Rica into Nicaragua. I had no shoes, barely any money and an ear infection that felt as though a weasel had burrowed its way into my inner ear. There were a few different reasons for my border crossing: my passport stamp in Costa Rica was about to expire, and I needed to set foot in another country so I could get it re-stamped, and I was desperate for some relief from the ear infection. I somehow got it in my head that swimming in fresh water would help so I reeled onto a bus, my equilibrium all fucked up from the weasel in my ear. Two nights before I left, though, I powered my way through a bottle of whiskey at a dingy bar in Jaco, sweating at a pitted wooden corner table while cheerful, sunburned British girls giggled behind their hands. I had lost my sandals a few days earlier in a rainstorm, and decided that I wasn’t in much of a rush to get new ones. I imagine that I looked like shit – sullen and drunk, barefoot and heavy-headed.
Eventually, a man sat down at my table without asking.
“Do you surf, my friend?” he asked, his accent thick in his words. He looked frankly at me, a slight smile on his face. I told him I did. We spoke idly with each other for the next few minutes, him forcing the conversation. I wasn’t into talking much at the moment – too much whiskey and too much pain. Eventually, though, he asked me if I had any surfboards that I wanted to sell. I told him I did. I had four sitting in my apartment, and I was almost completely out of money.
“A hundred dollars American,” I slurred at him. “A hundred dollars with leash and fins.”
He shook my hand, not even a hint of a barter slipping out of him, not one question about the state of the board. Easiest hundred bucks I ever made. I told him my address, and he told me he’d be by early in the morning. Stumbling home late that night, I was blissfully unaware of the torrential rain and pain in my ear, thanks to the strong drink. I wasn’t in any pain and I had made a hundred dollars. Quite a successful night.
7 AM. In the distance, monkeys called to each other, cracking my head open. The infant sun shone through the slatted windows, covering the streets with steam, drying the remnants of last night’s seasonal rain. Pools of water gathered where the curb met the street, the breaking clouds above reflected in them. Someone banged on my door, loudly. Not a knock, but a clench-fisted hammering, searing its way past my sleep.
I rolled over and glanced through a squint out the window. The man from last night stood there, looking out at the street while he waited for my answer. I didn’t answer. Getting out of bed was not worth a hundred dollars right now. He banged again, this time yelling through the slat windows at the same time. Jesus. I stood up, peeled the sheet off my sweating skin, and stumbled to the door.
“Fuck, man. It’s 7 am,” I said when I opened it, peering out from behind my arm.
“I come for the surfboard,” he told me, not smiling. I waved my hand in the direction of the corner.
“It’s that one with the blue and white pad on it. You want it?” He pushed past me, grabbed the surfboard, and stuffed a bill in my hand.
“A hundred dollars?” I asked, glancing at the bill, then throwing it on the table.
“You bet,” he answered. I was already walking back to my bed. I heard the door close behind him.
I woke up two hours later, feeling a bit better. My ear was still aching, ruining my balance, but the hangover wasn’t quite so bad. I stood up to drink some water and remembered I had sold a surfboard that morning. The money was still there. Picking it up to put it in a safer place, I looked at it again. Something was off. The green was a little too bright, the edges of the ink bleeding a little too much. Aw shit. I now had about 40 dollars, I was less one surfboard, and I had to leave the country in two days.
Crossing the border into Nicaragua is relatively easy by bus. You sit there in a sweltering, dusty jalopy, pay your crossing fees – around 15 dollars or 300 cordobas at the time – and show your passport to the bus driver. Then you’re in.
After getting off the bus, I hitched a ride in the back of a pickup to a small town with a place for rent on Lake Nicaragua. It was beautiful. Ometepe’s volcanoes stretched up towards the sky, sitting in the middle of Central America’s largest lake. Slight tendrils of cloud clung to the tops of them, their tails pulled by gusts of wind pushing their way up from the water. I was happy to be there. Happy and broke. I had spent the last of my money. Now I was in Nicaragua, still with no shoes, only a small bit of food, a return bus ticket, and a fake hundred-dollar bill.
“Cambio! Cambio!” the moneychangers called, waving fat stacks of bills, their coin belts full around their waists. They crowded around the bus, looking for someone crossing back into Costa Rica that wanted to change their money. I had stepped off the bus for a second for a cigarette and to take a piss. I was anxious about money – I had none, except for the fake hundred. Fingering it in my pocket, I wondered to myself why I had even held onto it. It was obviously fake, right? What if it wasn’t? I stood there in the sun, the dust and third-world litter blowing against my bare feet, considering my options. I could get back on the bus, sit down, cross back into Costa Rica, and not eat for an unseen amount of time. Or, of course, I could try my luck with a moneychanger. I’m great at convincing myself of things – the moneychanger would notice that it was fake after the fact. But, being a moneychanger, he’d have some kind of fallback plan for situations like that, and it wouldn’t be a big deal. I wouldn’t be stealing from him. Karma-wise, what I was considering was far better than what had been done to me.
“Cambio! Cambio!” he said. I walked over to him. What a prick I was.
Of course, he spotted the counterfeit almost before I pulled it out of my pocket. As I feigned innocence, he just shook his head, raised his hand, and let out a shrill whistle. At this point, I turned and walked away from him, trying to look casual and blend into the group of other tourists. I was the only one that looked worse than the homeless beggars that surrounded the bus. I have never wanted to get on a bus so badly in my life. I didn’t get on the bus.
“Ven conmigo,” said the officer on the moped. He had me by the arm, his gloved hand squeezing the crook of my elbow. The moneychanger followed behind, holding the bill in his hand, waving it at the guard.
Sweat poured off me. Here I was, no shoes, no money, and I had just tried to pass off a counterfeit hundred. An angry border officer was dragging me into the station, and I knew almost no Spanish. I wanted to be on that bus so badly.
But I was not on that bus. I found myself sitting in a small, hot room, with one chair facing a bare table. High up on the wall, a small window looked out at Costa Rica and the dust that separated the two countries. A bear of a man sat across from me, combing his hair casually. He spat on the ground; snorted something back through his nose, then sent it across the room – not disrespectfully, though – in a phlegm-ridden globule. Another man stood behind me, tall and thin, a pencil mustache drawn above a thin mouth, a narrow, gaunt face pockmarked with ancient acne scars. His eyes were dark and alert as held my shoulders firmly with both hands, assuming, I suppose, that I was some sort of flight risk.
The bear man looked at me, then leaned across the table, saying something to the thin one too quickly for my lack-luster Spanish skills to pick up. He turned and left, returning a few seconds later with my bag in hand, then putting it on the table in front of me. Unzipping it, he began pulling things out, one by one. There wasn’t much in there, and they found what they were looking for quickly.
The bear man fingered my passport, looking at the stamps idly while my wallet sat in front of him. Although it was empty, I still had my bank card from home, leading them to believe that I was like most other travelers, and at least had a few hundred dollars to my name. I was mulling over options when I noticed the man across the table put my passport in his pocket and pull my bank card out of my wallet. The thin man looked at me, then said something else I didn’t understand.
“Lo siento,” I stammered. “No sé español.”
He laughed. I was not amused. I was terrified. Twenty-one-years-old, broke, no passport, and in a foreign country’s border police station. Of course, this probably happens on a reasonably regular basis, but it had never happened to me.
They continued to prod at me in Spanish until I realized what they wanted: the pin number from my bank card. I’m sure they were saying something that made this sound more reasonable, but that was the gist of it, and I wasn’t about to give it to them. They had rooted through my wallet, looking for any money, while I tried to explain that I wouldn’t have done what I had done if I had any real money to spend. After about an hour, they both stood up and left, leaving all my possessions on the table. There was no explanation for their departure. It seemed to come mid-conversation, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do.
After waiting about five minutes, I stood up and tentatively tried the door. It swung open to a hallway with no one in it. I shut the door and sat back down, grabbing my passport, wallet, and bag off the table. Another five minutes passed while I sat there contemplating, what seemed to be at the time, a terrible idea.
Standing up and opening the door again, I found myself in the empty hallway. Smoked glass windows hid disembodied voices in offices behind shut doors, and at the end of the hallway was the main office. I could see the shadows of more border officers there, standing under a slowly moving fan and watching a television that had a soccer game playing on it. From the hallway, I could hear the sounds of the bus depot: laughing travelers in the late-afternoon heat, the money-changers calling to them. Cigarette smoke filtered through the windows along with the dust from the road.
It was so simple. I walked out–through the main office, smiling at the guards who looked at me with suspicion. No one questioned me, no one stopped me. I simply walked out and onto the closest bus, showing my return ticket to the driver who also didn’t question it. I walked out, got on a bus, and waited, looking out the window at the door I had just emerged from. After a few minutes, I saw the bear-man poke his head out the door, look around, then shrug and retreat back to his hot little office.
Looking back on it, I guess I realize that I was never really in too much danger. The chances of actually being arrested and detained for any significant amount of time were probably pretty slim. I think that the guards there were just looking for a few extra dollars and saw an easy way to get them. This probably happens a lot – but that doesn’t make it any less terrifying for a young guy with no shoes and no Spanish.
I’ve been in quite a few similar situations: ones where I could be really fucked, but somehow, things have worked out. I’m waiting, though, for that time when one of those situations gets ugly – ugly enough that I can actually say, “I’m fucked.”
I’ll tell you about it when it happens.
