27 NOV - 29 NOV
"You are honest but have no scruples. Your instincts and intuitiion are more powerful than your intelligence, which is far above average. When you get afraid, you don't panic. Danger acts almost as a stimulus to you. You think more clearly and make better decisions when driven by the survival instinct"
What's written above is a description by G.M. Stuart of Belgrader Dusan-Dusko Popov (1912-1982), who was Ian Fleming's real life role model for his spy hero James Bond (Mr 007). So, what has this got to do with anything that I may have to offer? Well, I have kind of an amusing story to tell which isn't actually mine but is the 'real life' account of my travelling partner Dina Jezdic who found herself in an amusing predicament whilst attempting to make her exit from Bolivia. I'll write the account in same manner in which is was told to me at about 2am on the 30th of November when I arrived in Buenos Aires after bouncing across the dirt roads of South America for 60hrs. To get to the story however I need to provide just a little background as to my own path and the state I arrived in upon making my return to Buenos Aires.
Two days prior to leaving La Paz my intention had been to head north to Lake Titicaca and then onto Machu Picchu, that was until some kind opportunist lifted my wallet from the room in which I was staying. Several phones calls, a Western Union transfer and 48hrs removed from the incident, I was in the main bus terminal of La Paz with Dina and Nick both of whom were also looking for a way out of their own. Dina had actually planned to leave La Paz on this day and was heading to Santa Cruz in order to catch a flight to Buenos Aires, Nick on the other hand was taking the planned route that I had just given up. My intention was therefore to jump a bus ride south from La Paz and then catch Dina in Buenos Aires two days later. As fate would have it we were going to find ourselves arriving in BA on the same day and more than likely leaving for home on the same day also. So almost as quickly as I had entered the bus terminal I found myself a ride south within 15 mins that was heading out immediately. I said my goodbyes and I was gone.
Now from what I could figure out the planned duration of the ride was going to be between 48-50hrs. I know that it sounds evil but for some reason I have the capacity to both sleep excessively and read excessively on bus rides. I just zone out and really don't find them to be too much of a chore. This journey however was to be the exception. The ride surreptitiously unfurled into a painful, mind bending expedition of mental endurance that in its last hours had me rocking back and forth in my seat and pounding on the windows in the hope that my internal cauldron of molten frustration would somehow psychically spew over and transfer itself to the driver in order to aid him in getting his expedience on!
The backwoods of Bolivia - on the way to Vilazon
The first signs of what would become my future of anguish and frustration arrived when the bus from La Paz sidled into the border town of Vilazon an hour late. The 10am connection to Buenos Aires had already departed and the next ride out, I was confidently advised, was going to leave at 2pm. For some reason I trusted the assessment and hence in my gringo naivety found myself sitting in a small office until 5pm waiting for the '2pm' connection. When we did actually depart our first exploits was a short drive, all of 500mtrs to the Bolivian/Argentine border, what I assumed to be a relatively simple formality as Dina and I had crossed into Bolivia at this very same point a month earlier in just a few mins. On this occassion, with half of the Bolivians on this bus for 'some reason' not carrying adequate ID, the crossing took 3hrs! It was PAINFUL! At sometime nearing 9pm we were herded back onto the bus and were allowed to proceed into Argentine territory. The ride however did not improve. With a sissy little toddler seated across the aisle that cried and screamed whenever someone sneezed, to the 40kph limit that the bus driver stuck to for hours upon hours, to the endless Argentine patrol checks, there was no fluidity of movement, it felt like an endless lesson in the art of patience. Both a lesson and a battle that I was certainly feeling myself beginning to lose. As the arrival time in Buenos Aires came and went without so much as a courtesy apology I knew that we were still literally hours away from making our destination. As the afternoon sun dropped out of sight the night set in and the shitty kid across the aisle wailed incessantly, it felt like she had been put on this earth with the soul objective of breaking me. Somewhere close to 1:30am the bus rolled into a northern BA bus terminal, 12.5hrs later than I had expected to arrive. I immediately jumped a cab and made a b-line for the hostel in Boedo where D and I had commenced our adventure two months earlier. As I walked into the room I looked at D, threw down my bag and explained my soul destroying experience - the response that I received from her however just blew me out of the water. The story of which goes a little something like this....
This border crossing took 3hrs!!! Have a look - Argentina near side, Bolivia far side...and 3hrs for what!?
A few hours after I had left La Paz Dina had managed to find herself a connection to Santa Cruz upon where she would be catching a plane to Buenos Aires in two days time, at roughly the time that I should have been arriving in BA. The ride from La Paz to Santa Cruz is approximately 18hrs worth and for the first 14hrs had been relatively uneventful. At some point along the road however there had been a patrol stop/check and the bus was searched by armed police and sniffer dogs. As the police boarded one of the dogs stopped close to D and she gave him a little bit of a pat before moving on. I'm not sure if this was seen as suspicious or not, and not that it mattered in the end as further up the aisle an Australian traveller was now becoming the target of the dogs sensitive detection device. With a brief search of the Australian's belongings it seemed that something suspicious was found and he in turn alighted from the bus with a couple of spritely Bolivian police to keep him company. The way Dina explains it, once he was off the bus simply pulled away and the Australian was left on the lonely desolate roads of Bolivia with what seemed a certain amount of explaining to do. The directors of Banged Up Abroad will be making a visit soon I'm sure!
So really, what's in the bag Dina? What kind of spy gear do you have?
Now Santa Cruz is neither an aesthetically spectacular or stimulating city. Even though it's the most populous city in Bolivia the feeling that you generally get is that someone has painted over it with a large pallette of shadiness and sleaze. It sits on the edge of the Amazonian basin and seems to constantly be inundated with heavy, humid weather. As Dina passed her way through the bus terminal on arrival she headed out into the constant throng of people and traffic that occupy pride of place at the terminal entrance. Making her way to a line of taxi drivers she found to her dismay that time after time they were turning her down for a ride into the city. It was only the last driver on the rank that accepted her fare and obviously the accepting party had to be the one had a large dose of crazy emanating from his pores. As they sped out of the bus terminal D was thinking as to how strange it was that it was only this driver that had wanted to accept her fare, that was until the point in time that she also realised that this guy was now breaking land speed records through the streets of Santa Cruz and could quite easily have them killed with a false move on the road. Asking the driver to slow down on several occasions seemed to have no affect as the lunatic just kept on moving like a man posessed. The only point in time that he stopped was the point in time when he was forced to stop by the direct result of an accident that put his vehicle out of commission. The police of Santa Cruz were then called to the scene and Dina in turn was taken down to the local station in order to provide a statement, or so she thought.
In disguise, obviously!
Down at the police station however the questions that Dina found herself fielding were not those she expected to be answering as an innocent party that had just been involved in an accident. Three 'police officials' made there way into a holding room where D was seated and proceeded to question her as to where she was going and why 'she' had been wanting to get there in such a hurry. When she explained that the taxi driver had undertaken the 'dangerous driving' course off his own bat they dismissed the reasoning outright and prompted her again for a better explanation. They then moved to the 'coincidental' circumstances by which she had found herself on a bus with an Australian that had been caught out by a patrol for carrying drugs (aha, so that's what happened to the guy - surprise). She explained that she didn't know the person and that it was just purely a coincidental. It was a coincidence that the police were certain would point to much bigger things. This line of questioning continued until they asked her as to whether she had been travelling alone, which ofcourse she hadn't, and how again it seemed very convenient that her travelling partner (aka me) had taken a totally different route to Buenos Aires. This wasn't suspicious at all they said.
As the questioning continued the police decided to sift through her belongings and came across two passports. One being her predominant New Zealand passport and the other being her unused Serbian passport. Ofcourse this drew even more attention and raised eyebrows from the Miami Vice boys of Santa Cruz who felt certain that they'd just trapped someone of note in their poorly maintained fishing nets.The legitimacy of having dual citizenship just didn't strike a chord with the CSI troupe who pushed the questioning behind her need for two passports until such time that they decided to press Dina on why she was actually in South America and what she had been doing prior to turning up in their country. Dina explained that she had been a Phd student studying in both Prague and then Berlin before deciding to make her way back to New Zealand after falling for a Kiwi guy that she had met in Berlin several months earlier. Not unexpectedly the police said that her 'cover story' of being a student that travelled in Europe and to the US for conferences to be extremely convenient and somewhat of a 'far-fetched' story that was neatly packaged for her benefit.
Conducting covert operations in Colonia with her 'contact'
During the time that D's belongings were being investigated her phone was also seized. In another string of coincidences the police found that there had been only two people contacted on the SIM card she was using, a 'contact' from New Zealand and a dealer in Santa Cruz that had been picked up by the police in the last 3-4 days. The dealer in Santa Cruz had in fact been the 'guy on the street' that Dina, Nick and Jade had found 10 days earlier to supply our Parque group with some party time goods. The New Zealand 'contact' was in fact her boyfriend who was only able to call/text on a Bolivian acquired SIM. As she explained the situation to the police and advised that she had no idea of who the dealer was (and I'm sure that at point in time she didn't) they pressed her on the 'cryptic' text messages that had been sent to her so-called boyfriend and put forward the hypothesis that the intimate nature of these texts were actually a code that she had organised with her 'contact'. If things were looking bad at the start of this inquisition know they were edging over the bounds of reasonable doubt, well, the South American version in any case.
Expert navigational skills - the hallmark of a great spy!
It was at the point in time that the police stipulated that they would be conducting a strip-search. Dina obviously flipped out at the thought of a six foot stupid Bolivian hick 'conducting' a search and called for an abogado (lawyer) to come in, which thankfully she was able to find. At this point it seems that they all went through the details of the story once again before the Bolivian police came out and put to her point blank what their 'skillful' detective work had managed to uncover in the last few hours. It appeared to them that all the coincidences boiled down to one of two certainties, that she was either a DEA agent or a spy! As Dina looked incredulously at all parties they put the hypothesis to her again and waited for her to make an admission, which ofcourse was not forthcoming. At this point the lawyer asked the 'investigators' as to whether she was actually being charged with anything, which ofcourse they were unable to do with just purely coincidental circumstances. The lawyer then put it to them that if that was the case then she was free to leave. As D left the premises the main 'investigator' made a comment to her in a manner that shecould only characterise as equivalent to being something out of a C-grade Hollywood movie, something akin to 'I'm sure we'll be meeting again very soon!'.
Irreverent or DEA agent? You be the judge!
That evening Dina spent a very sleep deprived night in a very dodgy Santa Cruz hostel, hoping and praying that her progress through customer and her flight out of the city in the early afternoon the next day would be uneventful. Thankfully, to a certain extent it was, although she was actually strip searched after clearing customs by a female officer, a hassle which apparently she didn't have too many any issues with but something I kind of flipped out over when she told me.
As she concluded her story we kind of sat in silence for a few moments. I shook my head and said something close to 'Well makes my bus ride sound like a kiddies party doesn't it? It's a hell of a story though, you'll be laughing about this in a few months time'. Dina kind of shook her head in the manner that one does when they've just been put through this kind of surreal situation. We sat back for a while and continued to chat about what had happened for sometime and as we did my own mind raised that little bit of doubt as to whether the Bolivian police hypothesis was actually correct. Dina couldn't be a spy, could she? Then again, I'm sure that many people dismissed Dusan-Dusko Popov as a spy also, to their own peril - those bloody Belgradese, with them you just never know now do you??!!!
