Cranking Michael Jackson from tinny speakers, the pirate taxi drivers of Quepos, Costa Rica, form a slow, horn-honking line to parade through town in their beaten up “taxis” - the equivalent of boy-racers in pimped-out farm cars, with faded plastic rosary beads swinging from their rear vision mirrors. They are protesting the national lack of recognition for their “profession” (albeit illegal) under the insignia “Operation Beans & Rice.”

Considering a local taxi driver was found with his throat slashed a few nights ago, this is one example of why girls such as myself are told “do not get in their cars.” Yet in this time of economic depression, even the pirates are feeling the pinch. “Operation Beans & Rice” represents the struggle to get exactly that on the kitchen table every night. In Guatemala, a country about a two-day drive north, 500 people have already starved to death. Operation Beans & Rice is not a joke.  

I gaze at this scene out the window of the bus as I head off to the international airport. The pirates are rumoured to be blocking the bridge out of town. I hope I don’t miss my flight.

A day or so later (having made it to the airport unhindered, un-raped, and un-pillaged by the pirates) I’m sitting pretty onboard a $69 million dollar yacht (by invitation only), gazing across the water at an $18 million dollar house, located in a plush neighbourhood in which I would soon be attending a dinner party with politicians and other VIPs.

You’d be right to wonder how somebody such as myself managed to half wander, half weasel my way into this world. I’d done my best to scrape the dirt from my toes, but I do believe that the inflamed mosquito bites and wounds on my big feet were no match for the flawless little hooves of the girls and models beside me. Nevertheless, a bit of luck and a Kiwi mentality has served me well in getting here at all. 

The Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show is apparently the biggest of it’s kind in the world. So much money is squeezed into that marina you cannot even comprehend it. I’m not just talking about ridiculously expensive boats, I’m also talking about Ferraris, Rolls Royce’s, fake tan, fake boobs, white gold, alligator skin, and of course, lots of fried food and beer. I saw a lady throw a catering platter of donuts and bagels in the rubbish, fresh from the oven. And I thought about Operation Beans & Rice. 

When Alice travelled between worlds, she used a rabbit hole. I use American Airlines. It may not be as glamorous, but unlike one of Luis Carroll’s trips, the comedown is a bit smoother. All insinuations of Luis Carroll being on acid aside, he sure did nail that culture shock.

When you realize that it is nothing for a billionaire to spend millions upon millions of dollars on a boat with goatskin wallpaper, silk carpets, gold plated everything, original artwork by Degas (which for once in my life, I actually looked without touching) and sporadically placed bowls of M & M’s and other chocolates (which I did touch) then perhaps, like me, your mind would wander back to Operation Beans & Rice too.

Returning to Costa Rica a week later, onboard American Airlines once more (but now wearing my new Victoria’s Secret undies) I watched the world change outside the airplane window. I saw the pure white yachts sailing off the Florida coast in the perfectly clear water. I saw the little fields of Cuba where poor humble people must surely be working harder than you and I have ever known.

The plane landed safely back in the San Jose rain, Costa Rica. One of the politicians I was travelling with tried to start a clap when the plane touched down, but nobody joined in.

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