Your best friend

Read / lees in : Nederlands

Your best friend in Cusco Peru
This is a good one, we’ll hang him somewhere nice

When I came shaking and rocking into Peru from Bolivia of course I entered the immigration office to have my passport stamped. But for my car they sent me to the office on the opposite side of the street, to the Policia Nacional building. There I was attended by a really nice officer who first checked my paperwork and then asked me 50 soles (10 euro) to enter all data into the computer system for me so I would have ‘ningún problema’ in Peru should I be pulled over and checked upon. After payment he opened the barrier so we could continue our trip. After about 10 minutes a taxi with 4 men in it tried to pull us over by cutting us of. Lidia panicked an I too was afraid that they were bandidos. So I made a quick maneuver to evade them and stepped on it. After a wild car chase of 15 minutes I had shaken them off (of course) and we continued relieved. But about 150 kilometers down the road I drove into a police trap where they were looking out for a Chilean runaway car. It turned out that I should have entered the white building next to the police station to register my car. And the cop that robbed me for 50 soles should have pointed that out to me of course. Furthermore I found out that customs had chartered that taxi to get me back to the border. Long story short, I had to drive back to the border with an officer on the back seat to get the paperwork done properly. The customs officer at the border luckily was willing to turn a blind eye to my mistake and focus on the 30 soles I gave him to get over the excitement of that day. On top of that the cop that conned me out of that fifty weaseled himself out of it with some bullshit excuse. The next day when we were on our way to Cusco I met another one of those bandits who promised to give me a hefty fine for not breaking any traffic rules. But fortunately he too was willing to overlook this for 50 soles. So in short, just like back home: ‘The pigs are your best friend and don’t cost expensive’.

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