it is not the greates feeling being completely naked in the back yard of a brazilian police station and being accused of trafficking drugs.
i left rio de janeiro early afternoon on my motorcycle with temperatures around 38C, in other words really hot and the traffic getting out of the city didn´t help. once i was out of the city i stopped to get a bottle of cold water and put on my ipod. once i got moving the wind cooled me down and the music made it a nice ride. after turning right into the road that was headed to cabo frio i passed a police check point. just another police check point like the many i have passed before. i slowed down and waved at the officials by lowering my head. little did i know that a few minutes later i would see a police car cashing me and pulling me over. after i stopped the police started mumbling stuff that i couldn´t understand because of the music in one ear and a ear plug in the other one.
he asked for the documents and i told him i had them in my metal case. he said to stepped down of the motorcycle that he needed to do a body search. the other cop had a hand on his gun. slowly he started padding my body and my private parts. made me take out everything that i had in my pockets. then he started searching my tank bags. every item was taken out, inspected carefully and smelled it. all my cards he would run them in his fore arm looking for a white powder once he was done he said to open my metal cases. by that time a good half hour had gone by and i was sure i´ll soon be on the road. but i was wrong!!!
he started to pull stuff out of the case again very meticulously and smelling it. they were looking for drugs and guns. the other cop asked a few questions about the trip. the younger copped after going through many things he found something. he claimed that he found something that smelled like marijuana. of course i laughed but that didn´t helped. he told me “if you have drugs you better tell us right now. there are two ways. one is that you tell us where you have it or the other one is that we take you into the police station. you know we are federal cops and if we find something your trip is over!!”
i couldn´t believe it!!!!! i was just in shock. he took my documents and told me to drive my bike to the police station. the distance between the motorcycle and the car was less than half a meter. just in case i decided to run away they could crash into me. once i got to the police station the accusation continued and demanded to tell him where i had the drugs. the first thing was to do a body search so he took me to the back yard of the police station. i had to take all my cloths one at the time until i was completely naked. he search each item very closely. for a moment i was sure he would put a finger up my ass but thank God that didn´t happen. then he said you can just put your pants and shirt because is going to be a while to search all your stuff.
he was right! like a mad man he started to pull out all my things, opening everything that he could open, smelling everything that he could put his nose on and every fifteen minutes acusing me of carrying drugs and demanding to tell him where the drug was if not it would be worse when he found it. by that time i was really annoyed and could not believe. after the first couple hours i saw his frustration growing since he couldn´t find anything. but once again he pulled a random grocery bag and said it smelled like marijuana. the other cops that were coming and going started looking at him like he was wasting time. his frustration grew and started throwing my belongings on the floor. for a while i panicked thinking that he would put some bag of drugs in my stuff just he could claim he found something. after going through my tank bags, my two metal cases, my black bag with camping gear he repeated the same thing “you better tell me where the drug is. this is a lot of work and if i find it myself it is going to be a lot wores” by that time i had enough and got pissed. I looked straight into his eyes and told him “i´ve been traveling for the past 9 months and been stopped hundreds of time by the cops and i know it will happen again. i´m not stupid to be carrying drugs so that some cop like you can ruin my trip” but that didn´t matter. he wanted for me to open the seat and started looking all the openings in the bike – even in the gas tank. night came he he wsa still looking. finally he gave in and told me to repack my stuff.
the whole ordeal took around 6 hours to inspect all my stuff and to get it repacked. i was finally back on the road and having to drive at night. never a dull moment!
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