Trouble at the border

Currently sitting in a hotel in the Bolivian border town of Quijarro. I only got two hours of sleep during one of the craziest nights of my life.

Last night I stayed in the Brasilian town of Corumba, close to the border. It was a long and hot bus ride from Bonito so I was glad to relax in a quiet hostel and play some guitar for a few hours. I was sharing a room with a Pierre, a bearded, portly Canadian, Luke, a loud and crazy brasilian, and Pablo, the hyperactive young hostel worker. The three decided to go out and find some beers while I stayed behind and played, but when they returned we hung around for a while and chatted. I don't drink any more but I was happy to chill with them, they were in a pretty merry mood. Apparently Pablo knew of some club in Corumba with a bunch of girls so they were snorting some coke, drinking and generally putting themselves in a fairly partied up state.

I don't usually have a problem with other people doing drugs - as long as it doesn't affect me I don't give a crap what they do to get themselves off, but I no longer have any interest in taking anything myself that takes my mentality away from sober, it's simply too dangerous here to be in an altered mental state. I was happy to go with them to the nightclub though even though I wasn't drinking and we had a pretty good time, I hit on some Brasilian chicks despite speaking absolutely no Portuguese. Interestingly this allows you to say whatever the hell you want in English because they can't understand you anyway so I had some fun with that.

I started to get a slight uneasy feeling while Pierre was knocking back his third bottle of vodka. After telling him to take it easy I was met with a 'EVERYONE is my BEST FRIEND here!' after which he started pole dancing. Luke was off somewhere trying to pull 'Im so horny man, all these girls so hot, I gotta fuck something'. Then it turned out that Pablo had lied about the girls and also had absolutely no money so Luke and Pierre started yelling at him and had to cover his red label purchase coming to about 120 Reais, Pablo left the club after this. Luke was alternating between grinding with this ridiculously gross fat chick and trying to keep Pierre out of too much trouble, which was tricky because he had taken to running round the club calling everyone a fag and giving us serious grief. He eventually punched Luke in the face and both were thrown out of the club, with Luke's fatty in tow.

Getting Pierre home was a major trial, I have never seen a man that drunk. Upon our return Luke started screaming at Pablo in Portuguese and Pierre began the process of destroying the dorm room with a half empty whiskey bottle in one hand. I tried to figure out what the problem was while Pierre continued to rampage around like an epileptic moose. Turns out Pablo had sneaked back to the hostel and stolen then snorted all of Luke's coke. Luke, on the comedown was paranoid and angry and spitting Portuguese at Pablo at a rate of knots, then the girls kicked up because it turns out the chick that Luke was grinding with was actually a prostitute and wanted paying 100 Reais already.

Stealing drugs is a major problem, someone who has an addiction problem bad enough to do this is unpredictable and likely to steal other things as well. I really did not want to be involved with drug trouble this close to the border so I decided it was time to bail out of there, after forcing some water down Pierre's throat I hurriedly paid, jumped in a taxi to the border and got the hell out of there. We left Pierre passed the fuck out on a bench, boy is that guy gonna go through some serious trauma when he wakes up.

Got through the border around lunchtime without any major dramas except for some reason I only had an Argentine exit stamp and no Brasilian entry stamp in my passport so according to all records I was never even in Brasil. No idea how that happened, thank christ the border official was understanding. Finally made it into Bolivia, its so relieving to be back in a country where I actually speak the language. Now please excuse me while I go collapse quietly somewhere.