August 26, 2008

San Pedro Prison, La Paz, Bolivia

"Don´t worry. He´s not going to hurt you. He´s only a murderer," former drug-trafficker S told me as I peered into a punishment cell. I began to laugh but my face dropped as I realised the lack of sarcasm in what he had said.

I had voluntarily entered one of South America´s most notorious jails having heard rumours about it for the past few weeks of my trip. San Pedro is unique in that it is not the prison guards who are in charge but the prisoners themselves. As S later said, "This door," pointing at his cell door, "is not to keep me in, but to keep the guards out." Like every other prisoner, he held his own key.

Earlier that day, I had walked up to the gates of San Pedro and asked the guards if I could have a look around.

"Of course, come in," they said. Surely it´s not that easy. I hesitated.

"Do you want my passport, some money?" I asked.

"No, just carry on."

I had heard so many conflicting stories about the best method of entering this prison, probably in part due to the number of people I´d asked about it. They all gave a different reply.

"It´s easy, just walk in with your passport. You´ll be fine," was my favourite response, though I didn´t quite believe it would be that simple. The most elaborate response was a lady who gave me a long talk on getting past the guards using scams including naming a prisoner I wanted to visit (which she provided) to arriving with a bag full of childrens´ toys and claiming that I wanted to help out the orphans who lived there. I decided to play it by ear.

I had arrived in Plaza San Pedro and though unmarked, the prison building stands out a mile off. Taking up an entire side of the plaza, the muddy stone building has only two entrances. The main one, I later found out, was for Bolivians and South American visitors. It was guarded by at least half a dozen heavily armed guards. To the left, however, was a small side entrance. I chanced it with this one, mainly due to the lack of weaponry on display, and I struck lucky as this was the tourist entrance.

I carried on, towards the prison bars where I saw a small square with kiosks and Coca Cola logos in its corners. A man in a yellow t-shirt waved me over.

"Do you want a tour?" he asked in perfect English. His name was O, a Bolivian. He tried to persuade me that it was safe. He showed people around all the time, he claimed. I could see no other tourists, however.

I knew that the prison guards had, once, allowed tourists to wander around quite freely with prisoner guides (for a bribe, of course). After the publication of a book about the place, however, the government had cracked down (in the soft way that only the Bolivian government can) by putting up a sign proclaiming, "No Turistas." The tours had continued, however, as the guards were so eager to take bribes.

Still the only tourist, O began to persuade me that I´d be okay. The guards nodded in agreement. I asked if I could take my camera in. No. No way would I be allowed to do that. "Pagaré mas, I will pay more," I said. No, was still the reply. This made me more hesitant as I´d have to leave a few hundred pounds worth of photographic equipment with a corrupt Bolivian police force. I handed it over, half not expecting to see it again. It would be an interesting call to my insurance company.

Two gringos came over. They hadn´t bothered to try to hide their tourist status like I had, and they were welcomed as easily as I was. This was all I needed to reassure me, so visitor number one that day and the two gringos were escorted through the gates by the guards, and up to S´s ´cell´ by O.

S was a fast talking, foul mouthed South African with a huge head of hair and a beard to match. It would cost me 35 USD for as much time as I wanted to spend inside. This was dutifully collected by a lady called L, whose purpose seemed solely to be a verbal punch bag for S. The money would go straight to the guards, she claimed. They paid off nineteen officials (guards, the governor, the Minister of Prisons) with 900 USD every day. They later asked for donations to the section ´foundation´ which helped foreigners who had no money and helped maintain the area. Remember, prison officials did nothing to this end. I later learned that this ´foundation´ was most likely L and S´s pockets.

I was in the Posta section, reserved for foreigners and rich Bolivians. It had once been the sector for the richest of the rich including the continent´s most powerful drug barons and its highest ranking politicians who would have champagne breakfasts in the square I had seen earlier. J, who I would later meet, would revel in the fact that he had bought his cell—you buy your cell; you are not assigned one—from a prisoner who had dined regularly with Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug lord immortalised in the Mark Bowden book and later film, ´Killing Pablo´.

The cells are not cells at all but rooms that are favourably comparable to those that many backpackers stay in in La Paz. S and L were watching wresting on their crystal clear cable TV connection. They claimed to have hot water twenty four hours a day. "Si, tenemos agua calliente," was a lie that many hostel staff would tell backpackers to entice their custom all over the continent. S even joked that here was the only place in South America that you could flush toilet paper down the toilet.

Whether true or not, this was no third world prison in the expected sense. I asked whether S considered San Pedro a punishment. "I spent three years on death row in Pakistan," he replied. "That was a punishment." He had been pardoned, he claimed, personally by President Musharraf when he wrote him a letter. Unfortunately for S, he had been caught again, trafficking 5 kg of cocaine on the Bolivian border.

He loved San Pedro though. He had prolonged his stay there by claiming not to speak English or Spanish, only Afrikaans. There was no way the Bolivian government were going to bother finding him a translator.

He explained that Posta was very different to the other sectors, which were for South American criminals. "What would happen if we went over there?" we asked. S pointed at the boys in the group and told us that we´d be knifed and then told a nervous girl that she´d be raped and her earrings ripped out.

This was collectively known as the Population section and was the subject of Rusty Young´s 2003 book Marching Powder which tells the story of a prisoner here. It has been banned by the Bolivian government, in an attempt to hide the corruption that is rife in this country but photocopies change hands for large amounts of money in hostels, restaurants and (in my case) buses frequented by tourists. It is rumoured that Brad Pitt will be starring in a film version of the book in the next couple of years, no doubt raising the prison´s profile.

Everything costs money in San Pedro. To this end, it has an economy that the prisoners claim is more efficient than the one outside. S loved to tell us that anything you could get on the outside, you could get inside—there were restaurants and shops. But the great thing about San Pedro was, according to S, that there was one thing that you couldn´t get outside that you could inside. And that was the world´s purest and most potent cocaine.

"Just on the other side of that wall," he told us as we walked around the square with him, "is where it is made." Raw ingredients were brought in and processed in the so-called laboratories that were overseen by men who knew exactly what they were doing, as they had done on the outside. Most criminals were inside for drug offences, a smaller minority for murder and rape etc.

There was a definite hierarchy, though S liked to claim every prisoner was equal, this was clearly not the case. Those with money had better rooms, better drugs and a better lifestyle than those without. Those who had a useful trade or skill would be able to make money from it, just as the protagonist in Marching Powder had done with his English language tours. That money would raise them up in the hierarchy. It would, of course, help if you were tough and could speak Spanish, or better were South American. Money on the outside was the ideal, and with their connections, many in the drug trade had access to this.

"This is where the best cocaine in the world is made," S continued as he directed us past the gym, the bar complete with pool table and kiosks selling food and drink, to his ´son´ J´s room. J was high. J was always high. The South African would sniff a huge amount of cocaine from his hand literally every few minutes for the five or so hours we were with him the rest of that afternoon.

He had been caught selling cocaine in a hotel in Bolivia. I asked why he had not offered a bribe to the police. He said that he had set himself up. He knew that he would end up in San Pedro and that was what he wanted.

J was agitated. He was talking rubbish and didn´t seem to hear many of our questions. We later discovered, while talking to him, that he had had a nail put through his ear drum the previous day as he had wandered into the other sections. I asked why. He laughed and told me that it was due to his lack of greed. People wanted him to care more about money and he just didn´t. This was confirmed to us as he dished out packet after packet of cocaine to his guests. He would drink only Sprite, likely needing the sugar to combat the effects of the cocaine. This was in stark contrast to S who necked about ten bottles of whisky every day but no cocaine.

J had also had an argument with his wife the previous day. As his wife was Bolivian, she was allowed to live inside the prison. Foreigners would not normally be allowed to spend the night, unless a large bribe was given. Although it was a men´s prison, women and children were a common site. It was genuinely believed that the economy inside was better than that outside so they preferred to live and work inside, with their husbands.

Nervous tourists kept flooding to the door of J´s room but were put off as we looked so comfortable and J wasn´t very welcoming as the day wore on and he became more agitated.

One reason for the attraction tourists have to the prison is that people like J can promise to deliver this high quality cocaine to anywhere in La Paz later that evening. We enquired. He spoke to the guy who had been delivering cocaine to his room and had generally been his dogsbody for the time we were there. He wanted those who wanted to buy cocaine later to see the person that they would be meeting later that night.

A nervous looking boy wearing a red tshirt came to the door. He was the dogsbody´s son and would be in charge of the delivery. Not more than ten years old, he was nervous but he knew what he was doing. He had done it a million times before. ´City of God´ came to mind and the immorality of the jail and its business hit home.

We left. I had been the first person in and was the last to sign out that day. I asked for my camera. After some initial trouble, I got it back. That daily bribe to the guards given by the prisoners obviously worked well.

I looked back to see J clutching the bars. He looked more agitated. Was it the nail through the ear? Was it the girlfriend? Was it too much cocaine? Or was it because as much as he claimed to love the prison, he saw us walking out and wished that he could do the same.

August 19, 2008

Machu Picchu

Didn´t get to see that shaman in Ecuador so might be waiting until Bolivia´s jungle. More exciting about Bolivia is San Pedro prison (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/06/americas_inside_a_bolivian_jail/html/1.stm). It´s been mentioned a few times by people we´ve met but no one seemed to know a lot about it and there seems to be more rumours about it than fact. It´s not in any guide books either.

From what I gather, it´s a very corrupt prison which the inmates run themselves. The officers´ only job is to keep the inmates in. Law, housing, food, business (restaurants etc!) are all worked out by the prisoners. Cells are bought rather than assigned by staff so the richer you are, the more powerful you are. The poor prisoners sleep on the ´streets´. It´s also, apparently, the biggest cocaine producer on the continent outside Colombia. The staff allow ´tourists´ in (visitors; you have to know the name of a prisoner to get in) in the hope that they buy cocaine which the staff take a cut of.

This is from what I´ve heard from people and read online. Not sure how much or what exactly is true but am keen to find out. Anyway, that´s about a week away.

Since my last email, went surfing on the flat waters of Mankora (north Peru), to an awful Museum of the Spanish Inquisition in Lima (capital of Peru) and done a hardcore four day hike to Machu Picchu. The others didn´t fancy it (they preferred a shorter bike ride and walk) so decided to go on my own.

Won´t go into too much detail but the hike was awesome. It´s nothing like walking in Wales or England. The altitude kills you for a start; unlike at home, you can´t get your breath back after a two minute break. The views on the walk were pretty awesome and ticked a few different boxes. We walked high up in the Andes (very cold) down to the forests below (very hot) over the four days.

Fifth day we got up at four and (some of us) walked the 1700 steps up to MP. We decided not to bother with the walk up Waynu Picchu (the mountain you see in all the pictures) which is restricted to the first four hundred people there, even though we were in the first ten or so as it´d be better to just chill out on the site for the first few hours and watch the sun rise through the mist that shrouds the city. For someone who struggles to appreciate the ornate architecture of old buildings and churches especially, MP is incredible. It´s a city built by the Incas for those who were keen to learn and take over the leadership of the empire that stretched from Ecuador down to Chile.

Spent today wandering around Cusco, though realised later on that it´s much cooler at night than during the day so gonna enjoy it properly as soon as the others get back.

Attached a few random photos of the walk, MP itself (with a llama) and a photo of the moon.

Girish

August 08, 2008

More Ecuador and Some Photos

Since last time... Got my hair cut for 75p. Went to this nature reserve and a guide showed us this tree which is where you get ayahuasca from. It´s a hallucinogenic that shamans use. We asked where we could get some and were pointed towards a market and bought it from what can only be described as a witch. Still not used it as I am trying to persuade Jamie and Nick that since we´re in South America, we´re better off doing it, if not with a shaman in the jungle, then at least with some local influence. Lonely Planet says that Peruvian people visit shamans to do it and other ´medicines´ for about 60 USD. It´s a 10 hour trip and a horse into the depths of the jungle so pretty intense. Will look into it. Others not so keen.

Went out in Tena (Ecuador) that night. Was very much local places we visited and the club at the end was essentialy a largeish hut on the river bank. And very much full of locals. We could tell this cos we were by far the tallest people in the place and, judging by their reaction, the most attractive.

White water rafting the next was ace. Though the rafting itself was a little tame I thought, it was the guides that made it an awesome day. Jumping out of the boat and swimming through the rapids is much more fun than paddling through. Decided to stay in Tena that night as we liked it so much.

Next day got a bus to Baños again. Went on an awful organised trip to that volcano I got photos of erupting last week. Was at night so you couldn´t see anything.

Charlie got here Tuesday night, with my new card. Her baggage didn´t arrive til the next evening. Was very frustrating though she didn´t seem to mind as much as I would. I´m sure I´d have been shouting at someone, most likely insurance company.

Since she got here we´ve been in Quito. Like I said before, its new town is very tacky and a night out there was not even comparable to that in Tena. Went to some springs which were okay but I´m not so keen on that sort of thing. Had met a couple of girls from Manchester the day before that were mates with Sophie, one of my housemates.

Got a nightbus last night to here, Cuenca, which is just museums and churches so nothing exciting but tomorrow bus to Peru´s apparently amazing beaches and surf and that meeting with a shaman.

Attached a few photos. One´s a typical security guard here with a ridiculously disproportionate weapon who was very pleased with himself when I asked for a photo. Another is a woman selling empeñadas which is what I eat when I´m hungry and no one else is. The view from our hostel in Tena. Quito by night and that volcano.

Girish

August 03, 2008

Ecuador

In Tena, Ecuador right now. There´s paragraphs but don´t expect too much!

So. since my last email...

Had a chill out day on the beach in Puerto Colombia before an early start the next day (29th July) to find our way from there to Caracas and the flight onto Quito. Caracas airport is so inefficient. Got there with more than two hours before take off and ended up running to the gate (with a quick food stop, throwing money on the counter type thing, for me) after having to queue and deal with lots of miserable Venezuelans. Not the nicest note to leave the country on.

Arrived in Quito via Bogota, Colombia, late that night. Quito has an old and new town. The old town is pretty quaint and houses government buildings, museums, theatres etc. The new town is designed to cater solely for tourists. There´s a square and strip of restaurants, clubs and bars that style themselves on those in Europe and the US. Didn´t really get a chance to take advantage but we´re back there on Tuesday so will fork out the 1 USD club entry prices then I´m sure.

Decided to stay in the old town. Spent the day wandering about, popping into the odd building or church (of which there are loads). Met a guy protesting outside the presidential palace because his son-in-law had been killed unlawfully by the Ecuadorian police.

Quito is very high up so it´s a bit colder than Venezuela (though is just below the equator) and is very mountainous. We took a cable car up to the top of one of these mountains and got a fairly good view of the city. It´s also very cheap in Ecuador, so that night we ate at what has got to be one of its most fancy restaurants, overlooking the presidential palace.

Next day (31st July) realised early on, with a call to NatWest, that my debit card had been cloned in Caracas. The bank told me that the card had been tried long after I´d left Venezuela, in Venezuela. Cancelled it. Not gonna moan too much about it, but the insurance company were incredibly difficult to get hold of, and when I did finally, they refused to help. Hoping that my new card gets to Charlie in time for her flight out here on Tuesday.

The front page of all of Ecuador´s papers around that time was a picture of a volcano which had erupted somewhere outside Quito. Would have been great to go see it but no one seemed to know where it was. Actually, got lots of conflicting information about where it was.

Headed to Baños instead which is famous for its hot springs and another volcano. The springs were pretty poor. More like an outside swimming pool with a good view. Met a guy in there though who recommended we get a cab to see the volcano. Jamie and Nick had read earlier that it was rumbling and the Foreign Office had advised against all but essential ravel to Baños. Got up there and as soon as we got our cameras out to take photos, the thing started smoking.

Jamie was really keen for this train ride at the Devil´s Nose. The Devil´s Nose is a mountain with a train track winding up it, built in the last century with quite a large loss of life apparently. So, that evening (31st July still) left Baños for Riobamba. Not much there except the train station. Views from the train were pretty impressive. Got to sit on top too. It´s cool but very much a tourist attration. It´s called Devil´s Nose incidentally because the church didn´t want a train link across the Andes and described it as the devil´s work.

Got the worst of the buses yesterday to Tena, which is where I am now. I really like it here. Reminds me a lot of Bartica, in Guyana, as it has the same authentic atmosphere. It´s not full of tourist places trying to sell you stuff but more bars full of locals playing pool and drinking Pilsener (a huge bottle for 1 USD). Saying that though, it´s world famous, apparently, for its white water rafting. So we´re giving that a go (for 40 USD, our accommodation is just 5 for a night!) tomorow.

Have just gone the south american way by getting my bag repaired rather than buying a new one so will go and collect that and dazzle the man con mi español.

Tried to add some photos but it´s taking forever so next time...

Girish