
McAfee’s Third World Travel Guide - Tombar
http://www.whoismcafee.com/the-travel-guide/
======
melling
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/>

~~~
eshvk
I would be interested in visiting some or most of these countries in a few
years time. At the risk of sounding cliched, I don't obviously want the
touristy experience but want to experience the country(ies) and am prepared to
do that for a few months. I currently know zero spanish, do you suggest
picking up a guide book or should I invest time learning it at a school (I
live in SF)?

~~~
melling
For $200-$300/week, you can get one on one immersion with a teacher in
Antigua. I spent 10 weeks. There are over 100 such schools in Antigua.

<http://www.guatemala365.com/>

Immersion is the best way for both time and money. Here's the one that I went
to:

<http://www.guatemala365.com/index.php?link_school=plfm>

~~~
geekfactor
Anyone know of someplace similar for French? I've read that Ste. Anne
Guadeloupe is a good place to go, but 100 schools?

~~~
joss82
Believe me or not, they actually have an Alliance Française branch in Granada,
Nicaragua, with native French speakers that can teach you the language. Cheap
nice place.

EDIT: It's not so nice actually. Go to San Juan Del Sur instead.

------
stevoski
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.

~~~
psykotic
> 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.

~~~
jacquesm
> That's why playing dumb is so effective--if you don't know the rules of the
> game, you can't play

And that really is the best defence.

~~~
4ad
For tourists, yes, it usually works. For locals, people who suffer most from
the system, it does not.

------
nlh
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?

~~~
adinb
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.

~~~
jacquesm
You did that wrong.

The trick is when you go out for a day to keep your wallet empty of cash,
simply have your cards in there but no money.

I've travelled just about anywhere like this and the 'sorry man, no cash'
works fine every time (I have some in my back pocket but I'm not going to tell
a guy like this about that).

I also instantly lose any ability to speak a word of the local language _and_
my English, so they're going to have to explain everything to me in Dutch (fat
chance of getting more than 2 words across, within minutes they'll be reduced
to sign language and scribbling pictures on pieces of paper). This takes a
long long time. It usually does not take more than 5 minutes of this before
they'll move on to the next target, their time is valuable.

When they get off shift they will have to pay their boss his part of the take,
if you are hurting their figures by taking more time than average and it looks
like you won't be paying or can't pay they'll shift their attention to someone
more profitable.

To date this trick has been used and verified to work in: Romania, Poland,
Italy, Colombia & Panama. What those countries have in common is a police
force that earns relatively little money and very little oversight.

Small time corruption eradication starts with you, the tourist. If you're
going to be a fat sitting duck and you pay up too easily when you've done
nothing wrong then you carry a part responsibility for keeping things that
way.

The Romanian police was actually really funny, they started off with 1500
Euros in fines (my crime actually was better described as 'driving with a
foreign license plate'), quickly dropped to about 100 Euros and then when they
found out that I didn't have any money centered on impounding the car. When I
readily agreed to that they sent me on my way...

I positively hate corrupt police. Don't pay them.

~~~
willyt
Pretending to be Dutch is not such a good idea. Almost all dutch people speak
very good English. In fact I've noticed that some Dutch people will get a bit
offended if you ask if they can speak English because they all can. So if the
officer knows anything about the Dutch they will know you are taking the piss.

On an unrelated note. I dont know about other countries, but in the UK I
believe it's a criminal offence to bribe a foreign official, so UK citizens
might want to bear this in mind when posting about thier experiences on the
internet, other countries may have similar laws.

~~~
jacquesm
There is not much to pretend, I am Dutch... it also says so in my passport &
driving license. And my English, as you can see is absolutely terrible.

~~~
willyt
Hah! Your english is so good I assumed you are a native speaker, it never
crossed my mind that you _are_ Dutch; I can't even tell if your last sentence
is sarcastic or advanced level self deprecation :-)

------
dmmalam
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.

------
geekfactor
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.

~~~
mahmud
Or in his case, on the run with murder charges.

------
sergiotapia
"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.

~~~
undergroundhero
It's a purely informative post written to explain police corruption to an
outsider. He mentions his disdain for sex slavery.

What about that quote qualifies him as a "piece of shit"?

~~~
jfoster
It's purely informational but it's information that is good for trafficking
and not much else. If you're not a trafficker, you might prefer that
traffickers are uninformed and fare poorly in such situations.

I understand that the information about how traffickers operate might also
assist those attempting to disrupt them, though.

------
mcdowall
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.

~~~
amtodd
My guess, and I could be wrong, is that during your limited time (1 month
split between three countries) down here, you most likely traveled by bus with
a bunch of other tourists, to places frequented by tourists.

I've spent a year and a half in Mexico and currently live in Guatemala and
have driven across Mexico and Belize in my own vehicle a number of times and
have paid many bribes.

Your version of Belize might be warm and welcoming, but how close is your
version to reality? How much time did you spend there? Did you ever drive your
own vehicle and have to deal with road side inspection points, or was that
handled by the bus driver?

~~~
mcdowall
Your right, I was on public transport. Actually I went to hire a jeep but had
forgot my drivers licence back in the UK, given your comments I'm probably
lucky I didn't!

------
ghshephard
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...

~~~
andrewcooke
you wouldn't do it in chile.

~~~
vl
Why?

~~~
jacquesm
Because Chile is working _very_ hard on improving their police force and not
reporting an attempted bribe can get a police man there into serious trouble.
Really, don't do it. It's a lose-lose situation. Either you end up fighting
those that are improving the situation for people like you or you end up
arrested for a very serious offense.

~~~
andrewcooke
where did you get this from? i've not heard anything about improving things -
it's "always" been the case that you don't bribe here (and not just police -
the only time in ten years i bribed anyone was one guy who sold bus tickets,
and that was kind-of creepy). do you have any reference for this improvement
work (if you're right i'm curious to read about it; corruption has been in the
news quite a bit the last few years)?

~~~
jacquesm
"always" is indeed the operative bit. It wasn't always like this. Not at all.

Starting in 1994 Chile made a real push to clean up its act (which it really
had to, it was making some other countries with very bad reputations look good
by comparison).

They not only created a whole pile of legislation (which is the easy part),
they actually acted on it. The net result of this is that Chile is now ahead
of the United States in the corruption perception index:

<http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/>

A result they can be very proud of, especially given the surrounding
countries. There is still a lot of work to do, there will always be a pressure
for the return of corruption where it has already been dealt with but on the
whole I think this is a fantastic achievement in a time-frame that makes it
even more impressive.

The effect of cleaning up at the higher levels of government has trickled down
to lower parts to the point where bribing police is no longer
acceptable/required, as it should be.

In Chile the various achievements have been in reaction to scandals that got
wide exposure, it seems that that is one avenue through which real change can
be brought about.

If all of Latin America would adopt the various Chilean policies I'm pretty
sure that it would benefit the region greatly, just imagine if 17 years from
now you'd be able to say the same about Colombia, Peru and Venezuela.
Apologies to Uruguay, they've been doing pretty good as well.

More reading:

<http://csis.org/files/media/csis/event/070710_Penailillo.pdf>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index>

~~~
andrewcooke
ok, i think i have finally found what you're talking about - in 94 frei's govt
created the Comisión Nacional de Ética Pública

but this was related to the transition from the junta to civillian rule (and
of course the junta was corrupt). that is _really_ old news.

so sorry, i misunderstood your original reply. yes, that's a/the historical
explanation. but if you ask someone in the street why you don't bribe police
it's because it's a simple fact of normal behaviour these days. the kind of
corruption that occurred during the junta is seen as exceptional to those
times.

there have been several scandals more recently, but they're generally related
to politicians more than police (and probably helped pinera get elected in the
hope that a new broom would sweep cleaner).

[edit: sorry, have been editing significantly; thanks for updated link]

~~~
jacquesm
Sorry about the broken link, I really hate it when google does not allow you
to cut-and-paste links to documents, especially pdfs.

[http://csis.org/files/media/csis/events/070710_Penailillo.pd...](http://csis.org/files/media/csis/events/070710_Penailillo.pdf)

Here is a re-try. The document linked is quite frank about achievements and
areas that still need (a lot of) work.

Yes, the Junta was corrupt, but the government that replaced it had its issues
too, and they worked quite hard on fixing those.

The kind of corruption that is not tolerated in Chile is par for the course in
pretty much all the surrounding countries.

I'm not sure if pre-transition Chilean materials are representative of
reality.

------
mahmud
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.

~~~
CamperBob2
How am I supposed to have anything _but_ contempt, if even 25% of what he
writes is true?

Don't want my contempt? Don't run your country like a corrupt shithole. Seems
simple enough.

~~~
mahmud
He says right there he was dealing and trafficking drugs, and traveling to
meet narcos. The countries are run like corrupt shitholes _precisely_ because
gringos like McAfee poison the community with their dirty money.

Every society has its dark underbelly of criminals, but what narco and sex-
tourism money does is tip the scales of power in those societies in favor of
the criminals. Suddenly, the poor but honest technocrats running the country
find themselves fighting a moneyed criminal class. No contest.

McAfee and his type are best served staying home and cooking meth in a trailer
somewhere, not play Mad Max in people's homes with his easy money.

~~~
raverbashing
" Suddenly, the poor but honest technocrats running the country"

Very funny. No

More likely the Farmer/Sheriff/Mayor's cousin (that's not 'or' but 'and') at
the local branches, and some of them that rises to governor, even president.
And don't even think they're not in the "business", it's run with their
permission (but of course it's not them that do the dirty work)

------
b6
> 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?

------
Margh
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.

------
amtodd
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.

------
eli
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.

------
jacquesm
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.

------
vlokshin
The domain was registered 11/16

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

~~~
wilfra
you think it's a hoax? it's been linked to from reputable news outlets as his
blog where he's posting while on the run from the belize authorities.

~~~
vlokshin
I don't REALLY think, but for a man that smart -- it seems a tiny bit silly.
But he's also that crazy.

------
hn-miw-i
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.

~~~
jacquesm
> Johns tale grows more epic every day and I am really looking forward to the
> comic/graphic novel.

I sure isn't boring but I would not call it epic.

> McAfee is a true adventurer and I hope the injustice of his ordeal is broug
> to light.

Have you already been able to make up your mind about him being guilty or
innocent? I find that with every new twist that gets harder rather than
easier, and in part that is because of the numerous inconsistencies in his
tales. It won't be long and McAfee will be painting himself as an anti-
corruption crusader in Belize at this rate.

------
contingencies
Maybe this guy has just done way too much coke.

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

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

~~~
CamperBob2
I think they did -- it was called _Apocalypse Now_.

------
littledot5566
What is the deal with Taiwanese sex slaves? Why the special mention?

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

------
Evbn
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

