Confessions From Abroad: Broke Ass Gypsy Adventures

Confessions | admin | February 23, 2011 at 9:03 am

confessions abroad2 Confessions From Abroad: Broke Ass Gypsy Adventures

By: Shit Happens

Somehow I managed to spend $87 of the $100 I brought to Nicaragua’s Ometepe Island, and lose my debit card all in one drunken debaucherous night. I was left with a grand total of $13 to get back to Costa Rica. Using my advanced freeloader radar, I managed to find a band of Argentinian gypsies, who just happened to be going to Costa Rica in the morning. They offered me dinner, a tent to sleep in and a ride across the border in the morning. I decided to risk the possibility that they were murdering rapists or narcotics smugglers and hitch a ride in the back of their pick up truck. In the morning, with the five of them, we took off. About six hours later, we made it to the other side of the island, parked the car at the ferry terminal and went to grab some casados. Thrilled that I had found a free ride all the way back home, I bought the gypsies a round of horchatas, leaving me now with $7 to my name. Unfortunately, this came back to bite me in the ass when we returned to the car to find three armed Nicaraguan police officers surrounding our car, casually leaning on the hood smoking cigarettes, looking effortlessly tough. My Spanish comprehension skills were not up to par to keep up with their rapid-fire conversation and with the vivid memory of scenes from “Locked Up Abroad”, I thought it best to grab my bag and casually slip away. With only enough money for a ferry ticket, or for a hostel, I opted to stay on the island in hopes my new travel companions would be released and I wouldn’t be totally fucked.

Several hours later, I stumbled upon the police station to find all five of them sitting on the street, playing their weird mandolin/ukulele hybrids, as they always were. As it turns out, they had a bit of a “misunderstanding” with a hostel owner and had pretty much took off without paying for a few weeks stay, roughly $200 . This misdemeanor didn’t seem too bad, considering my desperate state, so I stuck with them and shared a Coke. Directly across from the police station, we sweet-talked the owner of a combination house and minimarket to let us camp in his backyard for the night.

The next day, after twelve hours, a high-speed daredevil watermelon heist and one near fatal accident with a runaway steer, we made it to the border. We headed for the town I was staying in and everything seemed to be in better spirits than before the border crossing. The gas station we stopped in just happened to take my AmEx card that wasn’t accepted anywhere else in the country and we celebrated our victorious travel experience with a 12 pack of Pilsen, some chips and delicious Tico-cheese. We finally got to my house well after dark and I invited them to set up camp outside for the night. In the morning everyone was joking about putting one over on the border police. As it turns out they weren’t entirely traveling from Mexico to Argentina for the hell of it; they were transporting a cache of psychedelics (mescaline/mushrooms) across the continent. Pura Vida!

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