Overlanding Safety: Corruption & Bribes // Adventure Experts

Welcome to our Adventure Expert series where we invite you to sit down with us as we discuss adventure, travel and alternative living with people who are actually living this lifestyle. These longer format videos which are also going to be available in podcasts are designed for you to sit with us and other adventure experts where we discuss stories and advice and hopefully inspire you to do your own adventure. Today we'll be sitting down with Aidan Clemenco. Now I'm going to let him introduce himself because he'll do a much better job than I can but the topic for discussion is borders, bandits and the boys in blue. How do we cross borders? What troubles do we run into? How do we stay safe away from the bandits whilst living in our van on the streets and how do we deal with corruption and bribes from the police? This is a subject which will be on the minds of anybody that's about to embark on their own adventure. And guys while you're watching this please feel free to give us your stories and advice so we can share it with the community because this is what it's all about. That's right. Enjoy. Aidan Clemenco. Yeah. Nice to have you on the podcast although we are actually doing this in your van which is a pleasure to be in Otis himself. Yeah I'm excited to actually be moving instead of broken down. Yeah I feel your pain Yeah I know. Yeah we're both road warriors. Both of us have lived for a long period of time in vans. Both of us have traveled south of the border. So today we're going to talk about borders, bandits and the boys in blue. Basically everybody's worst nightmare. The concerns that people have about going across the border and how we've dealt with it and some of the stories of the encounters with the police or how like some difficult border crossings or even like the odd occasion when we've run into trouble with the less desirable members of society. But before we get into that. You should introduce yourself and what you've done. Why were you in South America living in a van? So yeah let's see it was I guess at this point two and a half years ago that me and three friends loaded up our van and drove down to South America to kind of just explore to travel around and do photography stuff and that was great. The van broke down after a while which was tough but we figured it out continued to travel a little bit but we ran out of money ultimately. That happens. Yeah that was tough trying to figure out how to continue doing what we really wanted to do but really not having the financial means of doing that you know. The nice thing about having a van is no matter how much money you you always have somewhere to sleep. So how long were you there for? Let's see it was a year a year total from when we left to when we came back. Okay so you got a lot of experience living in a van in South America. A lot of people are wanting to do this that trip down to South America and a lot of people are scared about doing it and have a lot of concerns so we're going to talk about what they are and how you overcome them. People might know you from the first project. Some of the people listening might have heard of your previous project. Yeah Vano Heroes. Vano Heroes the one and only. That was a really cool project. Very inspiring. We were following it. We don't get a lot of opportunity to follow other travelers because we're traveling so much ourselves and creating content ourselves. The cool thing is when I was getting ready for that trip leading up to it I was watching your videos. I had just had a surgery on my shoulder that had me bedrested for months before leading up to the trip which was good because I was able to really focus on the logistics and answer some of these questions that we're going to answer today. Personally I was looking at other people who were doing this for those answers and that person was you which is cool. So what were your concerns going into that project? I think number one it was safety. It's a big question mark. What are we getting into? Is this idiotic? Aside from that just the logistics of how much did it cost was a big thing. No one was really able to answer that question and I'm not sure if I'd really be able to answer that question either because it really varies on what you're doing and all that. Just the feasibility of the logistics that go into living in a vehicle. How is it crossing borders? Just all that little stuff. You hear horror stories all the time and people expect to go down there and have something happen. You're exposed. You're on the street a lot of the time. You're living in your vehicle and it's different than traveling out of a backpack and staying in hostels or going down and staying in hotels or doing family stays. You're really amongst it aren't you? You're living on the street with these people and you don't always know what these towns are like when you arrive. Everywhere is foreign to you. Everywhere is new to you. You have to develop an intuition, like an instinct. Do we have a good feeling here? Is this safe? The first problem we should talk about is the borders. It seems fairly straightforward. People cross borders all the time and that's kind of where I came to it from. I was like other people have done this. It can be done. That shouldn't be a barrier but it is a little bit of a headache and sometimes there's issues. Did you ever run into any issues crossing borders going down to South America? With borders, every border was really similar in that there was always a set of things that you had to do but then every border was also slightly different. They had one thing that you just couldn't really anticipate. You had to kind of just go into it knowing that things were going to take a while, that you're probably going to have to go run around to a few different places. It was probably going to be a little redundant sometimes but that at the end of the day you would get through because there was never a border that we weren't able to get across and you don't really ever hear of people never being able to cross the border. That doesn't happen very often. Apart from when I tried to go back to the USA. In the USA we have slightly different... We're talking about Central and South America borders where things are a little looser. There are some borders in the world where you need your paperwork in order. I think that's a big thing with all of these. If you can do anything to expedite the process and just make it easier on both yourself and the people that you're working with, whether it's a border agent or whoever, having your paperwork, having your passport, your entry, whatever they gave you when you enter the country is always a little different. But having all that stuff together and organized and then having copies of everything because you're going to have to make copies of absolutely everything. Most of the time these border towns are going to have little people or little stands where you can make copies and stuff like that. Sometimes they don't and then in those situations you've got to go all the way back into town or you know whatever and so having copies makes everything just a lot faster and just being nice you know being patient and just knowing that it's going to take a while you know and being okay with being cool with that. Did you ever see that at some borders there's like the kind of like border touts people were like coming up and saying hey amigo. Right like aides or whatever like I'll help you get through. Well they don't give you aides but I mean it's the place you get with them. There was a lot of that and I think we did sometimes they're really pushy and sometimes it's just like all right you know like fine. One kid led us through and that was great because it was really strange we were I can't remember what border it was I think it was Honduras and Guatemala. We were coming up to the border and there was just like this massive amount of semi trucks just back lined up like next to each other and like we we couldn't really get through and this this kid was like I can get you a way through and we're like all right great and he found this little route like through this maze of semi trucks. I actually put a little tiny scratch on the side of my van trying to navigate these tight corners in between these semis and in that case I was really I was really happy to you know have him there but a lot of the times it would be like I don't know I know how to do this I'm cool I really appreciate it. I think that a lot of those people expect you not to speak any Spanish and I speak Spanish which made it a lot easier for me to do that whereas if I didn't speak the language paying that little surplus to make it that much easier I think is worth it totally. Yeah I've heard reports from people that have gone through the borders and they pay for the guys to do it and one of the advantages is that it gives them some work and two if you find the process a little overwhelming when they do guide you through it so it's definitely an option. I don't really like negotiating and you know I try to avoid that. If I can avoid it then I absolutely will. So personally I always just went for the process and it was fairly straightforward. And you always have to be a little bit mindful too of the fact that they're whenever you're dealing with money and you know documents and stuff like that there's a huge chance of you getting ripped off. You don't want to give your passport to somebody obviously and have them you know because you could I think a lot of the times people play when you get screwed over it's people playing on your ignorance or your kind of just obliviousness to a situation and they'll say I need your passport and then you give them your passport and they never come back you know that stuff happens and so I think you still have to be careful with you know how you do it but I think that if people are around I think that's a great way to get through faster. So having documents in order that's definitely a good tip. I kind of learned that on the way and just start carrying photocopies with me because you can do it most of the time when you're there but it's just easier and makes it faster I lost my entry form in I think Honduras and it was such a hassle to like just not have the thing that they need and you know not really know what to do they didn't really know what to do and eventually they were just like all right you know fine get out of here but yeah just having everything together makes everything so much easier. Let's talk about money at the border. Often you'll need to change money. I found that changing money with the touts at the border was actually really good yeah I didn't have any problems I double checked the money and the exchange rate I got was better than what I could have got. I've gotten screwed over with so many fake bills in the past however every every time that happened was it was years ago. The last time down in South America with Banaheros I don't think we really had too many issues with fake bills at all which is really cool because then it makes it a lot easier to when you don't have to worry about fake bills you can change with anybody but when you're worrying about fake bills then you just have that in the back of your mind all the time because you don't want to like because sometimes they're really good but then you go to a restaurant grocery store they won't accept it because it's fake and you're screwed you know and so I always just have this I change at banks most of the time because I'm for the most part nervous but if I'm in a country that is not known for having fake bills then yeah of course I'll change the people on streets it will be cheaper and you know it helps them out a little bit too. It definitely helps to get the currency of the country you're trying like say you check out of one country it's usually the process you get the border you check out of one country and then you start the process to check into the next I have and sometimes they only accept their local currency so it's right hard to get the currency beforehand true and then so you're forced you're forced to do it then and there I had a habit of asking the border agents if fake bills are an issue in that country because that's like right then and there they'll be like yeah there's a ton of fake bills and then I'm a little bit more wary and if I have to change on the border I can at least like get an understanding of how to identify that fake bill or whatever because we're traveling on a budget you know every dollar counts and like I don't want to I don't want to lose any money on something that that's stupid you know but like you said sometimes you're forced into changing right then and there let's talk about paying fees and often I've been at borders and they've asked me like you need to pay three dollars to get in to finalize this paperwork I was going to say sometimes they ask you for money when you're not you don't really you don't need to pay that that fee but they ask have you ever did you ever have issues where they told you like because you've told me before that there's been times where like you need to pay for you really don't need to yeah you don't need to and often it's just the border person working at that time asking for a little bit of money you can give them the money if you want but I generally ask them for a receipt or somewhere in writing that it says that this is a fee I have to pay if you can if you can before going to a new country find out what the cost for going in is or what fees you can expect either from other travelers or somewhere online sometimes it's hard online because it's you know sometimes not all that information is online it helps because then you know going into it if you know someone's pulling your leg or not when they're like you know you pick fifty dollars for this or whatever when you're like wait a minute you know I heard that this was free then you can you know it's a little red flag that goes up at least I'll tell you a story about when I tried to do that one time I was so sure that you didn't have to pay I was trying to get across Honduras I was only going to be there for a few hours this you're driving across this country which is kind of no offense to Honduras it's a beautiful place but it's kind of in the way when you're trying to get somewhere because it's a little strip that goes across the bottom part on the bottom yeah absolutely I was worried about having to pay again because I yeah yeah so like I was trying to get from where would it have been Nicaragua and I had to spend a few hours in Honduras driving across the country and I had to pay 30 something dollars and so I said to the guy like the same thing I was like um I don't mean to be offensive all in Spanish but I just sometimes people ask me for money that I don't need to pay so if you could just show me somewhere that it's written down so that I know it's legit and he completely took offense to it and I was being really polite and he said uh sorry you're just gonna I'll get that for you but you just got to wait for me to serve everybody else and everybody else took about six to eight hours yeah until he finished his shift and then the woman came um he said my supervisor will be here in a minute just to help you and all he was he was just making me wait until it was a change of shift and then I got through in the evening but I just by that point obviously I was like take $30 please right yeah I remember I remember that I remember we paid $30 because we spent some time in Honduras uh and uh that was it was surprising because uh a lot of borders are free or um cheaper than $30 $30 was the most expensive one that we that we yeah and we were only uh it was only a few days later that we were crossing over that little uh bottom part when crossing uh into uh El Salvador and I tried to show him like look guys I just paid this a few days ago up there you know but still it had nothing to do with time it was more that you left the country and came back in and yeah I remember that but I loved Honduras Honduras is a great country I did run into a few troubles at borders um I spent a night in Guatemala I didn't cancel my car what like the process like you said is different for every country and in this particular country coming into Guatemala I had to register my car I think they even gave me a stamp in my passport which covered a whole page that's really important by the way guys if you're going to travel through the Americas or any long distance it's important to take care of your passport when you hand it over make sure you tell them put the stamp in the corner because otherwise I'll put it in the center of the page and you will fill up your passport and be stuck in El Salvador for six weeks like I was or some other place but yeah take care of that Guatemala they put a full page stamp in my passport and when it came to the checkout process the lady didn't fill it in properly or didn't take the paperwork and I just trusted that she knew what the process was and when I came to come back into Guatemala later I actually ended up having to sign the car over to my travel partner in their name in Guatemala right just to get the car like re-registered for the road how is that with the car going through borders like do you do you need to keep registered what's the process for getting um I think you're having having your title with you uh is get your title laminated I'd never got my title laminated I actually had with the van that I went down with last time I had two titles because I thought I lost my title so I got a replacement and so it was an identical title it's just the title number was different so I used the one that was replaced uh as the title I give down to everybody um and you know it started you unfold and fold it up so much that it gets to be a little fragile but that is your number one number one thing that you need anywhere is your title um so get your title laminated for sure um and have a ton of copies of it uh but aside from the title um insurance how was that so yeah insurance too um but most countries yeah that's a good question um every country would offer insurance at the border that you could buy oh really yeah you could buy you were in a lot of countries that was the cost that was the you know the 30 from Honduras or whatever a lot of the times that was for a temporary insurance that you'd have for the you know your your for the time of your visa sometimes it was quite affordable I think I paid like eight dollars coming in in Costa Rica so you know that's I actually paid a few dollars in Panama too because it was compulsory and because it was available at the border right and I needed it like I backed into a car there so and most of them compulsory to have insurance yeah and it's required yeah some of them it's not like Mexico you don't need insurance yeah you can get by without paying it um in a lot of them but I've had um police ask for insurance oh really totally uh in in countries and that just covers you for an accent or two for yeah it's not going to cover anything on your car it's just a liability on yeah on the other person yeah that's nice to have as well yeah of course yeah they asked for it for Mexico when we went down when we crossed over the asteroid and something that one Mexico I had to get ahead I was told I had to get ahead of time but when I got down there I did see that there were places at the border but I I did I got it online it was pretty easy so quickly just going back on like the border crossing did you ever come across any um any times where you needed to bribe people or like did you get any I never bribed uh I never bribed anybody uh you must have had invitations to bribe like people were like you must have seen it like this guy yeah there was uh invitations to bribe for sure one time we got pulled over uh coming into Cancun and we're driving you know an 80s VW van and you know we're coming into Cancun which is known for you know a place for you know Americans to come down and party you know do a bunch of drugs or whatever and so they I think just knew that we had something in the van we didn't luckily we had absolutely nothing so we're totally cool but I think we sat there for maybe an hour and a half while he tore apart absolutely everything like obviously he just pulled us over yeah it was just you know you get stopped all the time driving through Latin America for people to check papers and stuff um and this is the only time that they didn't just like you know let us go by like stop they obviously wanted either us to like bribe them to stop or to find something and then us to bribe our way out of the situation yeah um but yeah we were just like they came to he found us like our cigarettes and he's like what are these um but he didn't find anything and let's go begrudgingly but um that was the only uh that's I think another major concern for people is the um boys in blue yeah like the the police are aren't always um operating within the law like in Chile they're really good I think outside of Chile through South America it gets worse the further away you get um and we got stopped a lot by the police checking for papers we got stopped by the military anywhere up the pan-american highway like on the route north the cocaine route north you know there's a lot of drugs and arms checks it's uh it's guns they're looking for guns yeah and you because you see it right sometimes at some of the borders they'll show pictures of what they've confiscated and one thing I noticed in common was all those pictures were from large vehicles like gas tanks hollowed out in um big semis totally you know not tiny little VWs going fast and so so in Colombia an interesting little story we were in Colombia and um uh at the end of each month uh the they would run out of gasoline there just wouldn't be enough gasoline to go around and so um people would and it was illegal to fill up tanks in reserve because that would just make it so that people run out of gasoline earlier that they would all run out of gasoline earlier um and uh they would uh we were at a gas station and saw a big semi get pulled over and the cop was pulling barrel after barrel after barrel of uh gasoline out from underneath him and arrested the guy and because he was just you know filling up gas and then you know reselling it but it was actually really inconvenient because nobody told us about that so we ran out of gas we were we were our whole the whole plan for the four of us was to get to Ecuador we were so excited to get to Ecuador and we were so close we were in southern Colombia it was we were like we're going to go the next day but then we ran out of gas and had to wait a week because there was no that's not a problem that you would get up here i don't think it's just a good example of having to be open to like with the borders like i was saying with the borders just you know completely just being open-minded yeah but that's it that's not a problem like like you said to me yesterday um you know when you break down or you run into troubles you've already got your house there everything's fine you know like so you park up and you go explore a different place exactly the idea of driving versus flying or taking buses is to be able to spend time in between you know to be able to really explore the places in between destinations and if you get a flat tire somewhere if your engine blows somewhere if you run out of gas somewhere whatever that's those are those are obstacles that you can see not as obstacles but as opportunities to explore that place that you find yourself in that moment you know and that's a really cool thing i noticed um that like i said the majority of vehicles that were being pulled over for arms and drugs were huge vehicles and so i quickly identified the fact that they were looking through my tiny little camera bag which couldn't have like contain ak-47 you know or any substantial amount of drugs they were looking for something that they could use to bribe me like they were for like a little bit of a cookie yeah a little bit of weed or something so that they could say right you're in big trouble you've got to give me some money because that's that's they've there's been a precedent for that they've found it before and they've bribed tourists before and you know for the most part like i just kind of like you have to facilitate them i've got pulled over so many times driving my v-dub like it's just a absolute beacon when i was going through mexico with six surfer boys all like hair blowing out they're like gold they would literally pull me over i had a few techniques for it like i actually experimented with the different ways that you can speak with the police i've tried getting angry like for the eighth time in one day i got pulled over and i was trying to get somewhere and it was only a few hundred miles why not try some different ways literally i was like i said this is ridiculous i pulled i got pulled over half a mile ago like you know why it's supposed to be random why you know just frustrated and it's the worst thing to do so i'll clearly state the worst thing you can do is throw your toys out of your pram like don't lose your temper because they after that they were knocking on the tubes underneath and all the underneath to see if it was hollow they were like ripping up my floor which is nailed down yeah i was like dude like i haven't got any drugs in you know i i found with i think a lot of the times with because we got stopped all the time too and a lot of the times you hear that you know it's really it's good to just pretend that you know play dumb you know you don't speak the language just and i think that probably does work a lot of times but i do speak spanish and i think that it worked to my advantage most of the time to be able to answer all the questions be nice tell them exactly where i'm going what we're doing and i can see that they'd be surprised you know it'd catch them off guard okay and let us go and that that worked a lot of the times i did not on the vanna harris trip i did have to bribe uh i was in columbia and it was i was 18 and i was traveling around for a while backpacking um it was thanksgiving and we were uh in parque tarona in like the northern part on the caribbean coast and i had some weed with me because i wanted to go smoke weed on the beach it's thanksgiving you know uh and the i wouldn't have expected this national park to be you know have a security checkpoint with the military checking you harder than you know i've been checking airports and so of course they found my weed and i was so stressed out you know i was stressed i was like man this sucks so much and they were just like we're gonna deport you you know like this is bad you know this looks really bad for you and i was man this sucks but they kept talking about it over and over and over that they weren't doing anything then there's like 15 20 minutes them to them telling me how bad the situation i was in and i was like oh that's but i was so broke um i was just out of money and i had you know like the equivalent of like ten dollars like we want 20 bucks and i was like all right i got ten i got ten dollars i'm leaving the country tomorrow get the **** out of here they gave me my weed so yeah the police are good like that they're always looking for a bribe right um i just had i tried the speaking spanish thing to them i found that more often than not that engaged the conversation which just took up too much time like they'd see my chilean plates they'd you know then they'd be like where you going where you coming from and like it was just yeah that's that's an element that i didn't have to deal with having a south american vehicle yeah that's a whole another level of questions that yeah yeah so i think maybe that brought us more but you know i've had i've had policemen in the in alaska pull me over just to we'll come over just to chat chat oh that's what's the story with the plates the first time i got pulled over in south america on the road like actually not like not a a stopping point but actually pulled over uh we were on the highway um going down uh mexico on the paid highway because in mexico you can go on the paved highway or you can go on uh the paved highway that sorry the paid highway the paid highway that is like really nicely paved it's not a lot of traffic you blast through um or you can go like through towns on you know the not as nice road but much more interesting because you're going to your town and stuff but we were on the um we were trying to go fast we're trying to pick a friend up from the airport so we had to get to mexico city quickly and a cop pulled us over and we're like oh ---- you know getting our paperwork together and he just came over she's like where are you guys from you know what are you guys up to you know we're just like uh you just wanted it you're just curious yeah really nice guy welcomed us to mexico told us to have a good time and i'll tell you um i'm i'm actually going to make a video about uh the ways i dealt with police because i recorded all my interactions oh cool and i recorded like the different um approaches i tried not speaking spanish yeah i always say no hablo espanolio right which is wrong and it makes me look like a fool and so they're just like i'll just get out of here and most of the time that was the quickest way to end the conversation you know they'd be like uh you just went through a traffic light and i'm like um you know even if they speak a little bit of english it doesn't go very far and like sorry i don't really understand and i found that was the easiest way like i've tried to backtrack i've tried to like start with you know speaking spanish and then i can see it's not working to be like i don't understand even sometimes they're like you know okay but yeah most of the time they'd be like you were just talking to me yeah i've had it i've had a policeman um tell me that i broke the law i went through a light or something which i may or may not have been true i'm not sure um and stand there and tell me i need to pay like five hundred dollar fine yeah and i've just like i've literally played him so that he's standing in the bright sun and it's like 30 like 30 degrees celsius outside 100 degrees fahrenheit or something um and just stood there and waited until he got too hot and just seen the sweat beading off him and just been like i don't understand yeah it's just waiting game yeah i have got all day i don't have to be like how long are you what do you want to wait for the one one situation which really did suck was we were driving through nicaragua and um got stopped by the police and uh madison and i were in the front seats joel and parker the other two people traveling with us were in the back seats and um i don't we didn't really ever wear the seatbelts in the back seats but we wore seatbelts in the front seats a lot um especially because we get stopped all the time um and so we were definitely wearing seatbelts but he poked his head and back and i don't know if he really saw but he claimed that nobody in the car was wearing seatbelts and he gave us a big ticket but we also saw like it was there was a line of people in front of us as we drove up to this stop and everybody they were giving tickets to absolutely everybody for one reason or another and um he asked for my driver's license so i gave my driver's license and then he's like as i was handing it to him he's like okay i'm gonna keep this until you pay that you have to go into town and pay this ticket and then i'll give you your driver's license back when you and i still holding it and so i tried to pull it back from i was like no i'm not gonna give you i'm not gonna give you my driver's license you know like you're not gonna be able to keep my driver's license and we were like playing tug of war like in the window with it and he was getting really angry and stuff and he reached for his handcuffs and i was just like all right take it and then we went so we went into town to pay the to pay the fine and at that point i was like okay like he's asking should i try and bribe him i was like is that i didn't i i just said is this something that i can pay for now can i pay you this amount to like not have to go into town because we're not going that direction we just came from there you know it was like an hour away or something like that he's like no you have to go pay it he wasn't looking for a bribe at all they were just giving out tickets and you know so i went into town but the difficult part was he was right in between two towns we went into one town and they're like we have no idea who that officer is you know looking at us like we're idiots and we're like uh okay and then so we went to this other town and they were like yeah okay and so i paid it there and then we went back to his stand and he wasn't there anymore he had switched posts totally sounds like what would happen and so we were like where can we find this officer and they're like oh we have no way of getting in touch with him you know it's not like we have radios that we can call him on or anything like that you have to wait here until his shift is done and he might come back to the station after work if he doesn't go straight home and we were like are you kidding me and so we sent uh i stayed at the station while madison joel and parker literally walked the streets looking for this police officer and i i waited there for hours and he finally came back and i was just like you ************ you know here's the receipt and he was just really like cold about it and was just like yeah here's your license and yeah and that was that was really dumb that took all it was a whole all day like you know six seven hour uh thing trying to find my license and that would have really sucked because we were still on the way down and um so i was saying earlier that your title is important but your driver's license is important too in some in some countries some countries don't care whether you have a driver's license or not but some countries really do you know and so having that is a good thing you know people wonder why it takes so long to drive down to south america so to wrap up the whole bribe thing because we need to go on a break okay and sometimes you have no choice but to pay the bribe like in that situation sometimes you have no choice you know but they're going to give you a fine you're going to have to go you can't talk out of it yeah yeah yeah and i i have i have two um but i mean sometimes i don't know i i think i think that one one of the big things you have to remember is that you can't really just it's really easy to have this really negative connotation with law enforcement when you expect everybody to be just super corrupt and have to bribe everybody and stuff but it's it's hard to travel around when you don't trust anybody you know your lab just fell off oh that's why it was pretty close it's hard it's hard to be in a place and not allow yourself to be open to people you know if you're closed off to everybody then you're not going to have a good time so you have to give people the benefit of the doubt a lot of the times and sometimes you got to bribe somebody a lot of the times you don't have to you just got to be nice and cordial and trust that you know they're good people and you know get you on your way here's the thing about bribes i've never paid a bribe in the eight years i've traveled all around the world yeah but i've got been very close to paying a bribe if you find yourself in a situation when you do have to pay a bribe yeah like and that does happen like like if i have weed on me yeah they're gonna either arrest if that situation happens just so people know the quicker you can pay that bribe the cheaper it will be and the faster you'll get out of trouble because if you are arrested by one officer then he takes you to the station now you have to bribe the officer and the person that's at the station and if you get into a cell now you have to bribe a whole bunch of people and if you get into jail jesus christ i hope you've got a lot of money no you don't want to don't want to be stuck in latin american jails hell no yeah good advice okay we're going to go for a quick break and we'll be back cool guys thanks for watching we hope you found it interesting we would have really liked to have been able to share these stories with you personally around a campfire but this is the best we can do that would have been nice wouldn't it in part one we were discussing the crossing of borders and the police and corruption so in part two we'll be discussing the banditos how we stayed safe away from the uh the dodgy people that we met or saw on the streets so be sure to check out part two and don't forget guys if you've got any tips and advice leave it in the comments or even any questions because we want this to be something that contributes towards the van life and travel community thanks again for watching