Departure Tax

I went backpacking in Ecuador in the fall of my twenty-third year.

It was the most significant thing I had done up until that point. It had unfolded almost exactly as it was supposed to, with as many wrinkles as there tend to be during life's significant events.

Our trip was planned rather impulsively. We travelled from town to town in our six weeks on a series of whims involving things we thought we'd like to see, and things our guidebook told us to find. Our choices were the products of a completely unencumbered set of goals. We had nothing on our plates that had to get eaten, and no list that needed checkmarks to look fulfilled. Even Ecuador itself was chosen because of affordable airfare.

Upon our arrival, the airport looked like any other that could be expected in that level of economy. It was sort of like a bus station with a lot of heavily armed security. When we arrived we disembarked right on to the tarmac and walked into the terminal. Through the rush of Latin American stimulus everything struck me as new but not unfamiliar. Though I could barely understand the language circling me, or recognize any of the celebrities on the posters and magazine covers, or recognize any of the locations, cities, hotels or restaurants advertised around me, I was familiar with the airport environment. After all, I was in the Quito International Airport, I wasn't in a foreign country yet.

Airports are unique as elements of our civilization because of how they distinguish themselves from the places they are doorways, or more to the point, portals into.

Being in an airport is like standing in the doorway of a brochure designer's home. This entrance is carefully crafted to represent the best of this dwelling in its best state. True to the craft, it is also a fierce employer of bite-sized caricatured local color, mascots and symbols of a clichéd and perhaps inaccurate nature. It endeavours to represent the locale it services but often does so often with a Las Vegas Holiday Inn sense of subtlety and character.

All the while, standing in this doorway, looking over the vignette of your host's decorative vision you have the distinct impression that though you can't casually or politely leave, you are also not quite warmly welcome to stay.

A quick question: Have you ever paid or heard of a Departure Tax?

After our six weeks of modest adventuring, my buddy Joe and I strolled into Ecuador's International Airport in Quito for our returning flight home, on time and according to plan. We had left little to chance, or to the whim and schedule of cabbies, traffic and transit in the bustling capital. We were astute in every measure, walking proudly into the terminal, our maple leaf backpacks over one shoulder, as eager as we could be to rest comfortably in our home and native land, and revisit our familiar fast food chains and Seinfeld episodes. That warming sensation of the first step on the road home was interrupted as we were then greeted with an unlikely obstacle.

It was written in big bold letters, the first English language sign we'd seen in a month and a half.

---DEPARTURE TAX $25.00---

To most people in our world, traveling our world, passing you on the street, trying on clothes, filling their gas tanks, or ordering seconds, twenty-five dollars is not a staggering amount of money. Any amount of money can be significant and to choose an arbitrary sum that becomes important is ignorantly affluent. Twenty-five dollars has rarely been the starting point of many crises in my estimation. How could twenty-five dollars be that big a deal to anybody?

That being said, I feel that I have encountered that line because of my experience in a country where the currency exchange is not in its favour. At that time, two ‘gringo bucks’ could buy a steak dinner in a semi-swanky restaurant in downtown Quito. As was also an important part of my experience, six weeks is just long enough to really grow accustomed to those empoversihed luxuries.

First we tried to rationalize the presence of the sign:

This must be for Ecuadorian citizens travelling abroad. To which we both rhetorically answered: “Then why is it in English?”

How could we have been here for over a month and never heard of this? To which we then answered: “How could we have thought to ask?”

"So, what's the cost to leave this place and go home?"

How can they charge us to leave? Again we retorted: “They already charged us to enter, stay, eat, sleep, travel and play; they charged us for bathrooms at times; why not to depart?”

Then we rationalized.

“If it's intended for us I'm sure someone will guide us through.”

"Maybe they'll have some information when we check in our in bags." We walked sheepishly over to the baggage check-in.

"Maybe they'll have some information after they're done pouring the contents of our bags on the floor in the search for cocaine." Apparently we appeared suspect.

Sadly, they did not. It wasn't until we entered the line of internationals checking in their passports prior to their flights that we saw they were all indeed lining before the booth with a sign over it that matched the dreaded sign we saw at the entrance.

OUR PROBLEMS (In no Particular Order)

1. Money. Money was not easy to come by in Ecuador. Among the creature comforts that we and certainly most of our nation and generation had become accustomed to are easily available cash sources speckling the retail landscape like cell phone signals. There are more ATMs then phone booths these days. When we wanted cash we had to go to a bank and take out cash advances on our Visas because none of the local cash machines or banks would accept our debit cards. We were clever leading up to that morning. We diligently blew all of our local currency the night before as we knew we wouldn't the cumbersome weight of cash-laden pockets until we were in reach of an ATM that spoke our language. So clever.
2. Day, time, location. Like most airports, Quito's was positioned somewhat distant from the downtown core. This meant that getting to a bank that would give us our Visa advances in the timely manner needed to catch our flight would be unlikely. That fact that it was 7:30 AM on a Saturday made it impossible.
3. Our look. We looked just like two American guys. Yes, we had our Maple leafs proudly adorned, but in times of political peril people need you to walk the Canadian walk or they assume you're just another pair of callous American gringos using the popular and congenial red leaf as a passport.
4. Point of No Return. Perhaps it would have been nice to inquire about changing our flight, collecting ourselves in an extra few days of relaxation and returning with our new plan, but such couldn't be the case. As I mentioned earlier, the nice gentlemen that tore our bags apart looking for contraband, were certain to have by this time seen them on to the plane.
5. Communication. A slight to staggering language barrier would certainly prevent us from eliciting our best grovelling to whoever could forgive us this levee.

After a semi-frantic series of last-ditch efforts to try the airport's ATM… seven last times, we ran across the street to the airport's hotel. After several attempts to barter something out of the concierge we considered violence. We went back to the booth, but with fortune still making an embarrassing example of us, we found they staunchly refused any form of payment of currency other than US cash funds.

A quick word about desperation. I've been in the standard amount of harrowing situations in my days. I've been lost, I've had car trouble in rush hour, I've been threatened by the bully, harangued by my boss and busted by my girlfriend. I'd go so far as to say I've seen above the average amount of danger. I think I have a useful knowledge of what it feels like to be amidst desperation. I can quite confidently say that in those Spanish-speaking moments, under the shadow of that sign, my good friend Joe and I were the desperate literal embodiments of several key curse words.

What was left? Crime, harey-carey, a peaceful life on the Ecuadorian countryside, or perhaps calling our parents?

Or…

Begging.

A quick word now about begging. It’s not easy for people where we are from, in a place where we had come, to bring ourselves to pandering to the pity of strangers. Panhandling is an unfortunate and widespread trade in Third World Ecuador, making it a particularly sour tasting pill, to engage in it ourselves. It’s an altogether deeper level of pride-swallowing pain to see so much of the population scraping by on scraps from foreigners and then ask more of the same from others of our traveling ilk. We were co-monarchs of the Kingdom of Suck.

Our career in Ecuadorian airport panhandling ended up thankfully being a short one. At the door of the cafeteria we surveyed the crowd and found our intended mark in a woman a few years our senior sitting alone, who we saw earlier in our line at check-in. With our smiles 'set on stun' we moved in.

We were more gifted at the craft of international-level mooching than I predicted we would be. I knew we'd be good, but we came through as winners in the first round. The curt but pleasant German photographer needed actual convincing of our Canadian status which we were happy to provide through our kind pacifist gestures and a few courteous sentences in our best Francais.

After cunningly tracking us down in US customs, at our adjoining stopover in Newark, our German benefactor was reimbursed through the magic our new sponsor, an American ATM.

I've had second thoughts of every place I've departed ever since.

This story could have only occurred in an airport. There couldn't and perhaps shouldn't be more stress surrounding a human than before he or she takes flight. If he'd meant for us to fly he would have made Customs fun. Only in these tightened consulates of secured conformity could the most respected members of our community be found reduced to dishevelled owners of brief cases turned inside out holding their shoes in their hands, using all their remaining will to catch a flight that will most likely be delayed.

Airports are where the best laid plans are never suitable carry-on. They are in your luggage in Calgary... unless of course you yourself are in Calgary.

Moral of the Story: Do not measure your desperation until you've begged to a German woman in a South American cafeteria.

And always keep an extra $25 US in your sock.

Thanks for reading.

Patrick