I spent 9 months backpacking from Guatemala to Buenos Aires. There are thousands of people who do this sort of thing every year, and you'll meet lots of expats. In fact, until you hit Colombia, you probably can get by without knowing much Spanish. Personally, I would just skip this article, buy the Lonely Planet and live a little. Some places that I'd recommend seeing:

http://wikitravel.org/en/Antigua_Guatemala

http://wikitravel.org/en/San_Juan_del_Sur

http://wikitravel.org/en/Tayrona_National_Park

http://wikitravel.org/en/Cusco -- You hang out here when going to Machu Picchu

If I were going today, I'd probably stop in Santiago a see what's going on with StartUp Chile: http://startupchile.org/

I've been to 93 countries. All continents. Places travellers would normally not contemplate visiting. All independently. I've _never_ had to bribe someone. In all the years of doing this, I've had an official try to shake me down maybe 5 times.

I think McAfee's advice is way off.

I find reading articles like this exhausting. I've got to imagine being a criminal/sketchball while on the road in whatever country you're in is equally exhausting.

Is it not just possible to travel abroad, carry proper documentation, a bit of cash, and enjoy yourself? Does every situation really require constant vigilance to knowing when to run or not, how to make eye-contact, when to make excuses, etc.?

Perhaps I'm superbly naive. And perhaps I've just not seen enough of the world, but I've gotten along just fine without having to resort to cloak-and-dagger behavior everywhere I go. Sure, checkpoints happen in some places. If you're pulled over, you should have a legit passport and a few dollars if you're asked to pay. But only if you're asked.

I feel like some people ask for trouble wherever they go. McAfee seems like one of those people.

Am I nuts?

Most of this irrelevant if your a tourist, I've backpacked through 40+ countries and have only a few times needed to provide any 'documentation'. However the word is needed, you can take the initiative and get away with things your not supposed to do, like bringing alcohol into Columbia's national parks, or bumping long ticket lines!

Where the OP is completely accurate is doing any business (illicit or not). I have much family in India, who own several large businesses and level of corruption needed just to run the company is insane. After a certain size, you pretty much need to be a little socialite, keeping several dozen relationships well greased. It's completely pervasive and everybody knows about it - to western eyes it's insane.

It may just be that I don't have McAfee's cajones, but much of his advice herein seems like a surefire way to, at best, end up locked up in some South or Central American prison for the rest of your life; at worst, end up face down in some ditch someplace.

"If your contraband is drugs, offer them a small hit while talking. It re-enforces, subconsciously, the idea that the dope is your possession and that they are partaking due entirely to your good will. If you are transporting sex slaves, then I must say first that I cannot possibly condone your chosen occupation, but -offering each one of the policemen a taste of the goods may well seal the deal without any additional cash thrown in."

--

What a piece of shit.

I spent a month across the Yucatan in Mexico, Belize and around Costa Rica 5 weeks ago, I didn't experience anything like this at all, I sense an element of desperation, anger and blatant bullshit amongst this post.

Belize was a really warm welcoming country, I've travelled every continent and its up there in my top 5, so to read this is so contrary to my image of a wonderful country.

Is there anyone who has lived in one of these South American areas like Belize for a long time able to confirm any of this system of paying bribes to police officers at traffic stops?

Also, is his statement about police 'planting drugs' just so much self serving nonsense, or has anyone ever had a police officer actually do that?

The entire essay sounds somewhat specious to me...

Do this if you want to be an abrasive dipshit who the host community rejects. This guy is a colonialist-tourist, not a traveller. You can feel his contempt for the people and the lands he is "visiting" seething through.

> As all of my close friends know, I have not always been a teetotalling, drug fighting citizen.

He's pretending he wasn't talking about plugging MDPV on bluelight.ru recently?

Without giving a second thought to whether or not the events described are commonplace I thought the article gave some great insights into the psychology involved if/when you get shaken down, both for you and the officers.

I have lived in Mexico for the past year and a half and have just moved to Guatemala. During my time here I have driven my Mexican plated car across Mexico three times, across Belize once, and Guatemala twice.

Depending on the area you can either go a whole day driving without being stopped or be pulled over ten times in an afternoon.

Paying bribes has mostly been for things I have done wrong: no seatbelt, no insurance (Belize), not having my license on me etc...

When I first moved to Central America I hated the idea of paying bribes. I hated the idea of such obvious corruption. Now, if I'm in the wrong, I welcome having the ability to pay a small amount of money to avoid what would be a certain large fine and possibly having my car towed and impounded in my own country (Canada)

I have had yelling matches with Mexican border guards at the Belizean border demand an exit fee which doesn't exist and take my passport, threatening to not return it if I don't pay. The majority of tourists that cross the border just pay the $20 without questioning it.

I've had an M16 shoved into my body and surrounded by a group of cartel members with threats of cutting out my tongue. (Which turned out to be their way of playing a joke to scare me, before cooking my girlfriend and I dinner and getting us drunk, sitting around on a beach at night while they balanced automatic rifles on their laps.

I've spent an hour on the side of a desolate highway at 2 in the morning in Belize, smoking cigarettes and working out a bribe with drunk police who pulled us over for not having insurance in their country (we crossed over the border at 8 at night and their insurance office at the border closed at 7 and we tried to make it across the country overnight). We ended up talking them down from $400usd to $20 to hire their services for a police escort to Orange Walk, and helping us find a hotel to stay in until we could purchase insurance in the morning.

The majority of people visiting these countries will never have a negative experience. If you decide to spend any time living in one of these countries like John, then you will most likely, eventually, run into some sketchy situations.

Flashing bogus press credentials is not cool. It makes it that much harder for actual members of the press to do their job when there are fake reporters running around working on self-serving fake stories.

There is a very simple rule to travelling in unsafe places: don't attract attention to yourself. McAfee failed that rule from the second he set foot in Belize.

The domain was registered 11/16

No one is, even in the slightest, is doubting the validity of this blog?

Absolutely fascinating. Very helpful advice that you wouldn't read in a mainstream travel guide. Unfortunately corruption is everywhere and knowing how to respond and knowing the local customs is very important if you wish to keep your skin.

Johns tale grows more epic every day and I am really looking forward to the comic/graphic novel. McAfee is a true adventurer and I hope the injustice of his ordeal is broug to light.

Maybe this guy has just done way too much coke.

For a better travel guide, see http://www.artoftravel.net/

Love this, someone needs to make a movie about this guy.

What is the deal with Taiwanese sex slaves? Why the special mention?

Reading this and trying to decide if Brazil is third world.

After reading this thread I don't see what value there is in South America or SE Asia that can't bettered by a big screen TV and some National Geographic and Food Channel and BBC DVDs

> In all the years of doing this, I've had an official try to shake me down maybe 5 times.

Corruption in most of these countries is a negotiation game that is conducted implicitly. That's why playing dumb is so effective--if you don't know the rules of the game, you can't play, especially if you don't share a language. So, for every time where someone has forcefully pressed the point and made it clear to you that a bribe was expected, there have likely been a hundred times where a native in your place would have been expected to pay a small bribe of some sort.

I've never bribed anyone but have lived and travelled extensively in Latin America and the Caribbean. I've never paid a bribe, but have been close to it on a couple of occasions. I have generally avoided it by playing a dumb tourist or talking Danish to them. (I'm fluent in Spanish) but from Denmark.

It depends really much on how you travel. I don't know anything about you, but from the sound of it my guess is you backpack. If you're a backpacker, you probably don't have a problem as cops rightly don't see you as a good source of income. If you look really touristy you're probably fine as well most places.

If you're a resident expat, traveling in your own or a rented car you're right smack in their target market. And yes anyone can tell the difference between backpackers, tourists and expats. If you hang around in any expat watering hole you will hear all the worst stories (likely somewhat exaggerated by Rum).

I can tell you now there are countries where it isn't optional. It probably depends on when you're there and where in the country you are, as well as what you look like. I was driving through Russia in a right-hand-drive vehicle which has roughly the same effect as writing CHUMP in foot-high letters on the side of your vehicle. We got pulled over 12 times in one day by policemen looking for bribes, when we had done nothing wrong (if you do actually commit a minor traffic offense and get pulled over, they're even more aggressive about getting money out of you).

It is perfectly possible to get through without bribing them in cash, and we did - we only ever gave out cigarettes. At one point though they did take one person from our group away from us, to a windowless cell with a chair in the middle, and interrogated him for a while. They were just trying to scare him into giving them money though, we managed to get out of that through a combination of persistence (both in not relenting, and pretending we didn't understand their broken English), name dropping ("I want to speak to the British embassy") and one of our group bursting into tears (no one likes dealing with someone crying, including Russian policemen).

I haven't been to Ukraine, but people I spoke to who took that route found it to be even worse than what we experienced in Russia.

Oh, and fun fact: The Western-most country where a policeman wanted a bribe was the Czech Republic. I was surprised!

I've only been to 30 countries. And I've had to bribe a police officer at a traffic stop for not wearing a seat belt. Was about $5 which I think is extremely cheap to bribe a cop for. In Toronto it would be wayyyy more.

I've also been told by a local to stick a $20 bill in my passport to avoid problems going through customs because we had expensive computer equipment on us and were in a rush for our next flight. I refused that advice. But I've seen boxes that have been opened and things missing as well so I was taking a chance by not doing it.

I've seen a lot of corruption, and had a chance to participate in it. Seems McAfee's advice is based on experience. I wouldn't discount it so easily.

If you are a law abiding citizen, it is way off.. if you are into "pushing the limits into criminal activity" it is quite accurate.

Didn't happen to me either until I went to venezuela this year. I got shaken down at the border and the policeman stole 200 bucks while he was strip searching me.

I figured out after that the whole time I was being detained he was asking for a bribe (in a roundabout way, such that I didn't really understand with my poor sppanish skills).

Wow, how old are you? How long did the 93 country journey take? Average time of stay per country? That's amazing, really.

You should an reddit AMA.

Were you travelling by car? I've found the difference between being in a car vs backpacking that the chances of a shakedown attempt are much higher when travelling by car.

Have you been to DRC ? What he says applies to borders at such countries. Having been in similar situations (minus the drug dealing), I think His advice is spot on

It depends on your activities in those countries. If you ran a business in the most corrupt countries you most likely have to bribe.

I don't understand your comment. Obviosly from what you say you were not involved in any ilegal activity, so how does your experience compared to the one from the guy from this blog??

I had a similar situation in Rome, Italy of all places...was shaken down by a subway officer for having 'invalid stamps' on our subway passes (they were obviously completely valid).

If we just paid a fine of xx euros directly to him, everything would be just fine...otherwise, he'd need to take us to the station, delay us (we were military and in the country for a NATO conference) to the point we'd miss our meeting.

Being in the mil and all, I was rather steamed, but my wife's cooler head prevailed. Obviously I now understand a little more about the 'system', even in civilized euro countries.

I have no doubts to the accuracy of most of this article.

edit: we did speak some Italian, fluent Spanish, German & a bit of Russian. Didn't matter one bit. Did make the mistake of actually producing documents & complaining/not smiling & joking. Probably would have been fined less if we did.

I think his advice is mostly for non-tourist areas. If you remain in the areas heavily traveled by tourists and remain in these tourist areas, I don't think you'll come across these issues. I'm sure ex-pats, depending on strata, would encounter these situations, given they need to go places to conduct whatever business they conduct (i.e. they likely do not remain indefinitely in the tourist areas)

One might only come into these situations if you veer off well known tourist areas. If you take local transport (non-tour buses) then you might be subject to the same shakedowns as locals. So, if you act like a tourist and walk like a tourist, then most likely the biggest problem would be picked pockets.

Take Mexico, for example. My understanding is that so long as you stay in the tourist areas --say Cabo, Cancun ,etc., you'll, for the most part, be fine. Go outside the tourist safe areas and you're taking a bit of a risk. The size of the risk would depend on many factors, but it certainly increases. Mexico earn a sizable fraction of GDP from tourism, they'll do all the can to insulate tourists from the violence.

I felt the same and I've lived, worked and travelled in Colombia for 4 months. I never had to bribe anybody and didn't have any problem with the police or criminals. I enjoyed every single minute of it.

The only thing I did differently than in Europe was I would talk to locals before going for a walk in a random neighborhood at night and use taxis (which are so cheap anyway) instead of walking at night.

Honestly apart from a couple of times where the police were being extra aggressive, we found it fun. We just got used to it and it became a bit of a game - "this time, let's pretend none of us speak any language except German!"

This advice is for people carrying drugs, guns, 'sex slaves' etc. It shouldn't be read as applicable to anybody traveling in Central America. Though I think one key takeaway is that its not wise to go driving around on desolate roads in places you don't know well.

Sure, bribing cops at traffic stops is common. My dad lives in Colombia (he's Colombian) and I was visiting him there last year and go back often.

We were once stopped by a traffic cop for "passing in a no-passing zone" (passing is a necessity of traffic there, because many freeways are typically one lane in each direction, and sugar cane trucks are common and drive at 20mph). Basically just stopped to extract some cash.

The way it plays in that area of Colombia is, the driver asks if there's anything he can do for the officer, maybe he can pay for the ticket on the spot. The officer then asks you to pop your trunk so he can "check it out". Both of you get behind the car, you slip him 50,000 pesos (~$25, a very generous bribe), shake hands on go on your way.

My dad's excuse isn't that the cost of the actual ticket is too high--it probably isn't much more than the bribe--just that it's too inconvenient to pay it. Bureaucracy in Colombia is as byzantine as you might imagine, and you'll probably end up bribing the bureaucrats to process your papers faster anyway.

Now if I was a regular white traveler going through Colombia, I probably wouldn't even be stopped at all--the police know they can't hassle you in the long term like they can a local, they know even if you get a ticket you won't know how to pay it, and they have easier people to target.

I grew up in Venezuela. Most of what he says is true, except I'm not a drug-dealer, so I haven't been in many at-risk situations. I've either provided some "documentation" in cases in which my license or medical certification was expired, or I've taken the "confrontational" approach: provided valid real documentation and not letting myself be intimidated/harassed by them. I've done this in cities though, where the risk is much lower.

I hate being part of the corrupt system. I rather have them give me a ticket. Problem is, they don't want to give you a ticket. If they find something that they can hold you up for, they will try to get money out of you instead of arrest you. In the end, for practical reasons, it's better to just part with a few dollars.

In some cases, I've had to watch them as they "search" my car. You keep an eye on them as they do it so they don't plant drugs on you (they sometimes do).

Name-dropping is a common tactic too, but I've never used it myself. My friends have.

I've not been to south america, but I spent a fair amount of time in south east asia. Different part of the world but similar practices and yes the basic details of his story checkout. Police do setup roadblocks on random days on random roads in order to "check things". In Cambodia and Thailand a favourite was to check that you had the "correct helmet" a law recently being passed that meant you had to wear a helmet when riding a moto (most traffic especially in cambodia is by motorbike). That's the one I personally ran into.

About planting drugs, I can believe this as well. Remember we're talking relatively remote places where few foreigners are likely to go, this tactic is another part of the "negotiation".

So yes, this all sounds pretty plausible to me.

South American here (Peru) .. It all depends where you go.. Main cities & touristic places will probably be no problem. Go deep on to the jungle or to more dangerous areas (where you should not go anyways ) and anything can happen.

I would not suggest doing much of what is told on the article unless you really know what you are doing. (with plenty of practice)

The above said, make no mistake, police corruption is rampant, if you have not done anything wrong staying firm and having your papers in order is advised, if you do get in trouble , a $10 offering to have a "Cervezita" on your name" will help things for you.

Regarding planting drugs, I remember a big case of that in the 90's (but in Dallas Texas :)

Enjoy your visit.

Ps. Attempting to smuggle drugs out of the country is a sure way to spend an extended vacation in a very nasty place.

I lived in Romania for 20 years, a country more civilized (I use that term very loosely) than Belize, and even here, what he is describing is very common. In fact, the article doesn't describe the full picture. The bribery is not only with the police, is with everybody in a public function. This includes any bureaucrat (believe me, we had many) and doctors. No bribery, poor or nonexistent treatment.

There are some people in this thread who suggest that the problem is that people accept the status quo. That if nobody would pay anymore, the system would fix itself. There's a huge cultural gap that makes this hard to understand, but people in these countries don't want to end the exploitation, they want to become the exploiters themselves! The mechanism that allow the system to continue are reinforced by the new players. There's a feedback loop in place that makes sure the system accepts only a certain kind of new players.

I don't know about South America but I grew up in Africa and South Asia. The general principles for interacting with people in power outlined here (name dropping , money exchanges) are plausible and would work (Obviously, with significant cultural differences).

( My personal experience has been more mundane and mostly in the realm of evading Cops who flag you for traffic offenses. )

To be accurate Belize is in Central America/North America not South America. And I'm not sure you can group different countries together and assume their situations are similar.

The comments in his blog post seem to confirm the posts accuracy.

I lived in the Caribbean for a while and this kind of bribery didn't happen in some countries, did happen in others, and "expedite fees" were universal, as well as generally being charged more as a foreign person. How they defined foreign was amusing, as a native of a neighboring island was considered a foreigner, and another native from the same neighboring island was a local, even though the latter had lived in Miami and NYC for most of his life.

similar stories from Russia:

http://nytimes.com/2010/07/28/world/europe/28russia.html?pag...

http://guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cables-rus...

you wouldn't do it in chile.