Back in mid 2013 I was in Cali, Colombia staying at Iguana Hostal. I stayed there for nearly three weeks as the staff were hella awesome, the rates were low, they let me park the hippie van for free, and all in all the place had lots of good vibes
One day I noticed there were a couple surfboards and some surf gear in the storage room. Curious to know what fellow surfers were staying in the hostal I asked the manager Romain. He explained that two Australians’ had left their gear there when they flew to Cuba, planning to return a few weeks later. However when in Cuba, an emergency arose and they needed to return to Australia directly.
The couple had travel insurance which covered there belongings and the insurance company told them it was cheaper to replace the gear in Australia than it would be to ship it back from Colombia.
Upon learning this they informed Romain that he was free to do what he wanted with the gear, be it give it away, sell it, keep it for himself, etc. After telling me this, Romain proceeded to offer me one of the boards, on one condition, it couldn’t leave South America and when I was ready to leave South America I had to gift it to someone else.
I already had a longboard that I had purchased at the beginning of my trip in San Diego, California, my first ever surfboard, however this board was a shortboard and I had wanted to try moving down to a shortboard for quite a while. I graciously accepted his offer and set forth from Cali, Colombia with a new board in the arsenal. As you may have read in my previous post, I decided to ship the hippie van up to Mexico at the end of December 2015. In doing so I knew it was time I had to pass on the board and good karma to someone else.
I had been staying in Buenos Aires at a friends apartment with her and her two roommates for nearly a month. While organizing my stuff before leaving I mentioned about the board and Sandra chirped up saying she loved surfing but didn’t have a board at the moment. With that the board found a new owner. I told her the same as Romain told me, the board can’t leave South America and if you decide to leave you must gift it on to the next person.
