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Busted!
In Bolivia police is not your friend. It can be your goddam enemy but a least they make things pretty interesting...
Our first contact with the Bolivian cops was when we crossed from Paraqua to Bolivia. Then they seemed to be pretty relaxad and OK. But there was more to come.
After spending a couple of weeks in the country we heard a loud knock on our hotel room door. I crawled to the door after badly slept night (our hostel was next to noisy street) and what do I see? - Interpoll, please show us your passport!
I mean, what the f***? I always thought that these guys are after international criminals. In Bolivia they seem to mainly harash tourist and check their ID.
Well, our next meeting with the bolivian law enforcement was going to be a lot more interesting. First some motherf***ing idiot stole whole lot of our stuff from our tent. Me and Satu only lost maybe 400-500 euros worth of stuff but our american friend was way more unlucky. Those c*** uckers took his digital SLR and loads of other elctronics. Worth some 5000 usd...
So now your all thinking "why do those jerks keep all that stuff in a tent???" I´ll explain. It all happened the second night we spent in a village called San Ignaxio de moxos. There was a weird, somewhat funny traditional festival. Because everything was full booked we bought a tent. It was quite cheap since we teamed up with two other travellers we met via Couch Surfing.
Anyway, we got our tent up in a nice persons yard. There was a high fence around the yard and we stupidly thought it was safe. It wasn´t it seems. Second night and most of our stuff was gone. Our italian friend even lost her shoes!
So to the police we go. All in all, we had to hassle with those guys the whole morning. First listning once what happened in handwriting. Then but ALL the same stuff to computer. Before that, a bit of running around the village because the thiefs had dropped some of our stuff in one other yard.
Finally all the paperwork was done and then followed the best part: the police took me to the backroom and showed me the book where our incident was originally listed. Then he goes, like it´s totally natural: "How much is this worth, what do you think?" Afterwards he explained to all of us seperately that in Bolivia, those kinds of documents come with a price. Finally all of us had to pay 50 bolivianos to the jerk. For doing his job. Basicly we bribed him. After all, that little piece of paper was worth a lot more for all of us.
Somewhere in meantime we saw the ugly face of bolivian prisoner treatment. At some point during the morning they threw a guy to jail, we tought it was for fighting. Allreaydy in this part they used guide a lot force. But some minutes later, when the guy kept asking to make a phone call the cops really got wild. The guy who was typing our documents just walked to the cell and sprayed pepperspray straight to guys face, with no reason whatsoever!
So bolivian cops are not number 1 on our list. And we haven`t managed to get to the jungle yet, the weather was against us twice. But at least we made it to big city for intependence day. There´s parades all around and now we`re off to see them. After all, I still love Bolivia, being that a bit masocistic, maybe =)
The pic this time is from Salar De Uyni. Our pics got stolen with our cam. Now we bought a new one and maybe send you some Salar pics soon enough!
Antti
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