I Fought the Law

Monday 17 May
Taganga

…and the law didn’t win. But before that…

Not much happened during the daytime today. I watched qualifying. I watched Doctor Who. I went for a sunbathe on the beach. I found the other guys when I was out shopping. We went for dinner and then afterwards went for a drink at the Mirador – a bar slightly up the hillside, overlooking the bay.

It was a pretty cool bar, we started talking to some Kiwi girls and had a few drinks. As we walked back to the hostel we started talking about how a few people we had met had been stopped by the police a lot and had a lot of hassle from them, and how we hadn’t experienced that at all. We had only finished making that point when a moped pulled up beside us and a cop got out and wanted to search us.

Luckily I didn’t have anything on me but we knew that one of the others in our group had a small bit of weed on him. So we knew what was coming. After emptying our pockets and going through the contents they found the weed.

Luckily a few days ago we were talking about this with another traveller. He had told us two important facts. The first is that in Colombia it is actually legal to carry five grams of cocaine and twenty-five grams of weed. Yes, you read that correctly. Twenty-five grams. The second fact was that if the cops stop you, you should always demand to speak to the British Embassy (or whichever country you think you come from). The one thing you don’t do is agree to a bribe.

So the cop took the weed and asked for the guy’s name. He only gave his first name. For some reason the cop thought this was enough. There was some talk in Spanish. He toyed with some handcuffs, presumably to scare us. There was another cop there. Some more talk. Eventually he said “immediate deportation”.

We said that we wanted to speak to the British Embassy. Luckily my Spanish stretched just about far enough. Quiero hablar Embajado Británico. It wasn’t quite right but it was close enough.

There was some more talk in Spanish. The cop pretended to talk into his walkie talkie again. Strangely, there didn’t seem to be anyone on the other end. More waiting. We told him that we wanted to speak to the British Embassy again, just in case he wasn’t sure.

“OK”, he said after a while. “Two thousand dollars.” Obviously an invisible judge had corrected him on his sentencing. What kind of system is it when the judiciary is run by ghosts? I was also wondering where anyone would get two thousand dollars from in the middle of the night in a town with no banks and a country where the cash machines don’t give out dollars. Apparently this wasn’t an issue for the cops. They really need to rethink their bribery tactics.

We still wanted to speak to the British Embassy. Again there was more talking in Spanish, and the people on the other end of the walkie talkie remained curiously silent. More waiting. More talking. More requests to speak to the British Embassy.

Fast forward a few minutes with more of the same. Then apropos of nothing it was “OK, you can go. Es illegal in Colombia,” he said, in case we weren’t sure. “Gracias,” we said, as we walked away.

When we got back to the hostel we rolled up a bit fat Colombian carrot* and spoke of the old country.

*I didn’t inhale, obviously.