want to make some real money?â
âHow?â
âEasy, you fly to Amsterdam, bring marijuana back, and Iâll pay you $5000.â
Growing up in the cocaine gateway of South America, where drug busts were daily news, meant Rafael knew what the job was, and felt insulted. âCome on, man, you think Iâm a mule? I just want to buy a bit, and thatâs it,â Rafael snapped.
Marco persisted: âMan, you look like a movie star, the cops are never gonna stop you. Itâs easy; you can hide the grass inside the surfboard bag. Easy money, little risk â come on, brother.â
His slick talk didnât work. Rafael turned him down flat and walked back to his nearby bungalow angry. But it had ignited a spark and for weeks he watched Marcoâs horses blithely coming with kilos and leaving with cash. He started selling Lemon Juice, freelancing as one of Marcoâs many sales people â paying Marco $500 an ounce, and making $100. They became good friends, and Rafael saw the intricacies of the game up close. Before long, he decided to give it a shot.
âOkay, man, letâs go,â he told Marco on the beach, âbut I want to invest some cash, be a partner too.â For Marco that was no problem. It was often how deals were done, with several investors in one run, and at this point it was blue-chip. So, in the sun, on the sand, they struck a deal. A few days later, Rafael flew out of Bali to the marijuana capital, Amsterdam.
I was very confident. I say I can do this, no problem, theyâre not going to touch me because twice Iâve flown into Bali and they never even looked at me.
â Rafael
This was the mid-1990s, when Bali customs was lax, and before a rash of big airport busts and draconian life and death sentences were imposed. But there was one sobering, stand-out case that most surfers across the globe knew about â the notorious case of Frank De Castro Dias. Frank was doing a coke run to Bali but foolishly slipped up. As well as 4.3Â kilos of cocaine embedded in his two surfboards, he was carrying a saw to cut the boards open. It created suspicion and got him busted. After paying a bribe of $100,000, he was sentenced to nine months in Baliâs Kerobokan Prison, instead of the prosecutorsâ requested ten years.
Indonesian customs officials on the resort island of Bali have arrested a Brazilian accused of smuggling 4.3 kilograms of cocaine hidden in his surfboard, a customs official said on Saturday.
â Reuters, 15 January 1994
Frankâs bust exposed and ruined for a while the method of using surfboards to carry drugs to Bali, as boards suddenly got more attention. But drug traffickers constantly worked creÂatively to stay that one critical step ahead of authorities, by devising new tricks. On this first run, Rafael was using the so far undetected method of stitching the grass into the lining of a surfboard bag. His insouciant confidence only slipped when his bag came through Baliâs airport with a large cross slashed across it in chalk. It gave him a scare, but didnât stop him.
I freaked out a bit, but when they say, âOpen the bag,â I was acting very calm, smiling. They asked, âHow many boards inside?â I say, âThree.â âOkay, you can go.â Oh shit yes! Close. âCiao.â
â Rafael
Winning his first hand of Russian roulette was always going to ensnare him in the game. In days his cash balance had rocketed from zero to $5000, giving him precious freedom to live his dream life, spending several months cruising the islands of Lombok, Sumbawa and Sumatra, surfing from dawn until dusk. At nights though, he contemplated his next move, especially as the cash started running out.
Rafael was never going to be just a horse. He was smart and savvy, with a fierce confidence and strong ego. In Amsterdam, heâd closely watched as the master drug packers stitched the dope into the