The kindness of strangers: at San José airport, I couldn’t pay my departure tax – then a woman handed me the cash

8 hours ago 16

I was 19 and travelling by myself for the first time. It was 1994 and departure tax wasn’t always part of a plane ticket, so it sometimes had to be paid before flying out of a country. And if you didn’t have it, you didn’t leave – something I was about to learn the hard way.

I was on a five-week trip around South America that I’d spent years saving for, visiting the pen pals I’d written to as a teenager. At the airport in San José, Costa Rica, I was waiting in line for customs when I realised the border guard was asking those ahead of me to pay US$5 in departure tax – money I didn’t have. It doesn’t seem like a lot now but it was back then. I’d flown in from New York’s JFK airport two days previously and the only ATM had been out of order, so I hadn’t been able to get cash out there, and I’d spent my remaining few dollars on an overnight stay in the city.

I tried to argue in appalling Spanish, and tried to offer my bank card and traveller’s cheques, but the border guard shook his head and told me it was cash only. There was no ATM at the airport and it was a Saturday, so the banks were closed. This being the 90s, there were no phones or internet to call for help. He waved me away and served the next person in line.

I stood there a little stunned, my stomach dropping. My ticket took me to Panama, then Chile and eventually on to Bolivia. If I missed this flight, all my subsequent flights would have been cancelled. Just as I was starting to catastrophise, a very poised woman who had been a couple of spots behind in the line handed me the money as she walked past. “Here you go,” she said, with no fuss. “I’ve been in a similar situation before.” And barely giving me time to thank her, she walked past me and into customs.

I couldn’t find her in the departure area but I really hope that I had expressed how grateful I was in the small moment she spoke to me. She handed me a lifeline when I felt as though everything was about to fall apart, without expecting any praise.

That small act had massive consequences for me and, cliched as it sounds, it was a moment that shaped how I saw life. It wasn’t the first or last small kindness I have received but it’s the one I think of whenever I despair about people and the world.