Driving with Drug Smugglers

I have learned a lot while working on this project, from mist-netting to a whole range of British insults, but perhaps the most unexpected bit of knowledge that I've gained is how much cocaine a drug smuggling old woman can hide on herself. Here is what I do on my days off...

Fridays are our days off because of the bus schedules and the (theoretical) ease of getting to town. The bus passes by our lodge anytime from 11am - 2pm (+/- 1 hour), based on road construction. There are also trucks that pass by all day, many of which you can ride in the back of. The trucks are nice because you can theoretically flag one down earlier in the morning, but you might be riding on a sack of potatoes (or in the case of last week, chickens) for an hour. Unfortunately there has been a ton of roadwork lately, so parts of the road can be closed for several hours, but they usually open up briefly during lunch. As a result, you can spend a few hours (>6 for our friends from the Wayqecha station) waiting on the road without any vehicle passing.

Last Friday, Jack and I wanted to go into town (Pilcopata) to go birding in the lowlands and buy our bus tickets to Cusco for our vacation this week (!). We went out to the road around 10am (where the researchers from Wayqecha had been for 5 hours) and were lucky enough to get a truck by 11:30. This truck was packed. When the driver opened up the back for us to climb in, there were probably 30 people staring back at me, with the only people-less area being a mountain of produce sacks. The driver hurried us in, meaning that we basically toppled over onto the mountain of bags. Immediately some of the women started pointing and speaking rapidly in Spanish. At first I thought they wanted me off of their potatoes, but then I realized that they wanted me off the bag of chickens that was squeezed BETWEEN the bags of potatoes. You're right, my mistake. Jack had the same realization a few seconds later when the bags he was leaning on all started moving. Very fortunately we came to a halt at some roadwork, and when the driver let us all out to wander around, we saw that the actual bus was four trucks behind us and had empty seats. Sure, it was two soles more and a bit slower, but I think the chickens appreciated our sacrifice.

After arriving in Pilco, Jack and I went birding in Villa Carmen, which is a little piece of paradise outside that fairly desolate town. We were delayed slightly by a massive thunderstorm moving through, but once there we saw tons of amazing creatures, including a dozen hoatzin preening in a tree, some kind of jacamar, and an aracari. It was a great day for birds!

After that we started our long journey home. We waited for our bus to leave Pilco, and then we had our typical hour-long stop in Patria, a town only 30 minutes from Pilco, where we usually grab dinner from a little restaurant by the buses. Leave it to Peruvians to serve rice, pasta, and potatoes all in the same meal. But it's good (or at least growing on us)! When we returned to the bus, the driver's assistant (person who rides shot gun and is generally in charge of getting people to take the bus) told us to sit up front in her seat, for whatever reason (we were getting off much sooner than most people?). That was nice because it meant that we didn't have strangers pushing over us or hitting us with all of their bags of coca.

Some details about the coca: dried coca leaves are extremely common in Cusco as a remedy for altitude sickness and to ... stop feeling hungry, whatever the term for that is. The actual coca plant is also used to make cocaine. There are limits to how much coca one person is allowed to bring into Cusco, which has something to do with rural people being able to dramatically multiply their profit at the government's expense. The rural folk also use bags of coca leaves as a cover for the cocaine that they are smuggling into Cusco.

Anyways, before leaving Patria, the driver's assistant said that there were actually two empty seats for us to sit in (not together). There was initially a child in mine, and there was just a mountain of coca bags next to Jack, so we were going to squish, but the woman made the kid get up (and join the horde of other kids in the aisle) so I could sit. I would have preferred to just lean on Jack's arm rest because I had women and children bumping into me from all sides (and crying periodically), but I got used to it. About 15 minutes out of Patria we slowed to a stop (normal because of construction), and as soon as I noticed flashing red lights outside, all of the women on the bus started panicking and whispering and moving things around frantically. I realized that it was probably the police doing a drug bust which was why the women were trying to hide their extra bags of coca. Immediately the driver turned the lights out inside to give the women some cover,  and the woman next to me tried to shove a bag of coca into my hands. I shoved it back saying, "No" several times, and then shouted up to Jack warning him to not take anything. He said that no one tried to get him to take anything, but the women next to him actually swallowed what looked like little baggies of cocaine. As soon as the police boarded the bus and the lights came on, I saw that someone had shoved a bag of coca under Jack's arm and frantically shouted for him to get rid of it. The police walked slowly down the aisle shining flashlights on all the women and collecting passports from the men. Their first problem was the woman who was sitting in the aisle a few feet in front of me on a bag of coca the size of an oil drum. Surprisingly enough, the blanket she threw over the bag did NOT fool the police! She started protesting loudly as one officer escorted her off the bus, while the other kept moving through inspecting and questioning certain passengers. Eventually he left the bus and the woman got back on... with a huge smile on her face... and all of her coca. Good to know Peruvian officers can be corrupted, I guess. Oh yes, and the woman next to Jack promptly regurgitated her baggies.

After that brief encounter we kept going on our way, and all of the women were suddenly smiling and giddy as school girls for having evaded the police check point. However, another hour down the road, RIGHT before our stop, there was another check point. This one had them even more on edge because the driver started shouting, "SAN PEDRO! SAN PEDRO!" and then ushered us off the bus, which we think was so they had slightly more space to hide their stashes. It:also meant that we had a 10 minute walk up the road in the dark through the police check point instead of getting dropped off in front of our camp. Since we weren't actually on the bus for the second raid, I can only assume the first was a decoy for the cops to get some quick money, while the second was the actual bust. The rough life of a drug smuggler!

Well, two nights ago Jack and I got another glimpse at drug smuggling as we road a bus to Cusco for our vacation. We left San Pedro around 9pm and napped on and off for a while, with periodic stops for construction and what not. At one point we were stopped for quite a while, but I didn't think anything of it - just enjoyed the chance to sleep without bouncing all over the place. Eventually I became aware enough to realize that it was 1am-ish and there were police on the bus checking for drugs. They didn't bother us at all, but they started confiscating bags of coca from the woman behind Jack. At first she just kind of whined and halfheartedly protested, but as they started searching her bags, under her seat, and the eight layers of clothing she had on, she got pissed pretty quickly. She was SHOUTING at the officer about how he was taking money she needed for her children, and she refused to let go of the bags she was holding so he had to physically wrestle them out of her arms, and in doing so split the bag so that it rained coca leaves on Jack. Soon three more officers joined in and tried to drag her off the bus, at which point she braced herself against Jack's seat and practically ripped the chair out of the ground as the officers pulled her towards the door. Finally they gave up (figured they got enough coca?), at which point she ran forward and started hitting the closest officer repeatedly and calling him a rat. I was pretty surprised that they didn't beat the crap out of her for that one, because you put a hand on an officer in the UK or US and you go to jail. After the whole thing was finally over, the other women on the bus all started shouting, "VAMOS!" to the driver, probably because they wanted to get te heck out of there before their stuff was all confiscated, too. Meanwhile, the woman behind Jack started sweeping up all the coca leaves she could find on the floor and repackaging them. I should also note that an hour earlier, a kid took a dump in a pot not far from where those leaves fell. I think my coca days are officially over.