DUBAI – August 2021
TL;DR I got detained in Dubai over a drone I didn’t register, paid the fine, got it back — only for it to crash into the bay in Cartagena a few months later. Kept the receipt as a reminder.
Some things you bring back from your travels aren’t souvenirs you can put neatly on a shelf.
Sometimes, it’s a tattered boarding pass.
A sun-faded photograph.
Or in my case — a printed receipt for my own detainment at Dubai International Airport.
It’s still tucked away in a drawer somewhere. A memento of a trip that didn’t go exactly to plan — but maybe unfolded exactly the way it was supposed to.
The Arrival
It was supposed to be a smooth trip.
I was flying into Dubai for a friend’s wedding — nothing but good intentions and a camera drone packed neatly in my luggage, ready to capture the sweeping skylines and desert horizons.
The plan unraveled almost immediately.
After a long flight, my friend Sal retrieved his bag without issue. Mine, however, took its time — arriving alone, conspicuously delayed. I should have taken that as a sign.
At the exit, just a few steps from freedom, a security officer waved me aside.
“Sir, secondary inspection.”
The words hit like a flat tire.
Out came the drone. Out came the regulations I hadn’t bothered to read. Turns out, flying drones in Dubai requires a permit, and ignorance wasn’t an acceptable excuse.
I was given two choices: ship the drone back home or leave it in airport custody.
Since we were hopping over to Jordan for the wedding, I chose to leave it behind, pinned under a growing stack of paperwork and official stamps.
The receipt they handed me — for the detainment and seizure — felt heavier than it should have.
It still does, in a way.
The Retrieval
After an unforgettable week in Jordan — Petra, the Dead Sea, a wedding that felt like something out of a dream — we circled back through Dubai.
The city, once a place of wonder, now felt a little sharper around the edges. A little less forgiving.
I spent hours chasing down my drone, bouncing between Customs counters and security offices, each desk manned by someone with the weary patience of a man paid to say “wait” over and over again.
Eventually, after paying a fine and signing a few more forms, they slid the drone across the counter like an afterthought.
It felt… different now. Lighter. Like a relic that had picked up a bit of patina in the process — scarred not by flight, but by bureaucracy.
Still, it was mine again.
For a while, at least.
The Final Flight
A few months later, back in Cartagena, Colombia, my dad — a man whose enthusiasm often outruns his caution — decided he wanted to try flying the drone.
Off the back of a moving boat. At sunset. In open water.
It didn’t take long for the inevitable.
The drone lifted off, fought the breeze, drifted off course, and — in a final act of mechanical rebellion — plunged straight into the bay.
Gone, just like that.
An unfortunate, but inevitable demise.
And somehow, I couldn’t even be mad.
I just laughed, standing there on the deck, watching the ripples fade. It was too perfect an ending for a machine that had already seen too much.
Reflections
I kept the printed detainment receipt.
Not because it was proof of some mistake, but because it was proof of an experience — messy, inconvenient, unforgettable.
It’s a reminder that perfect plans don’t make perfect memories.
The scratches, the missteps, the waterlogged endings — that’s where the real story lives.
Much like the philosophy behind Patina Adds Value, it’s not about preserving things in a flawless, showroom state.
It’s about the marks they gather along the way — the proof that they, and you, have lived.
Sometimes a drone isn’t just a drone.
Sometimes it’s a passport stamp in your mind you didn’t expect to collect.
And that, more often than not, is the value worth keeping.
TLDR
- Where: Dubai, United Arab Emirates
- What happened: Detained at Customs for an unregistered drone
- Fine: Paid. Lesson: learned.
- Drone’s final fate: Sunken hero of Cartagena Bay
- Memento: The original airport detainment receipt, kept safe as a reminder of a story better than any aerial shot could have captured.