Postings from Peru: January 2009

"Mama la gringa tomo' una photo de mi!"

Front Yard in Paracus = Sand Box

Isla de Ballestas: Bahia Paracus

Each year men from the mountains are hired to remove the bird droppings covering these islands 3 meters deep. Men from the coast have been dubbed to lazy for such strenuous work. The Guano is used as fertilizer. Perhaps you saw this in the news Guano used to conceal cocaine shipments. Check it out below

Peru traffickers hide cocaine in smelly bird dung
December 17, 2008, 4:10 am
LIMA (Reuters) - Traffickers hid 2.8 tonnes of cocaine in thousands of pounds of smelly bird droppings, Peruvian police said on Monday after uncovering the latest ruse to conceal drug shipments.

Cocaine exporters in Peru, the world's No. 2 producer after neighboring Colombia, counted on the stench of the dung, which is sold as a high-end organic fertilizer, tricking dogs trained to find drugs at ports of entry.

Guano, as the dung is known in Spanish, is rich in nitrates and phosphorous and has a strong ammonia smell. The cocaine was hidden in 400 bags of guano that together weighed 20 tonnes and was bound for Europe.

"The organic products camouflaged the cocaine by neutralizing it to avoid detection," police said after a five-month investigation that led to the seizure at a warehouse in Lima about 10 days ago.

Five people were arrested, including a Colombian man, police said.

Guano accumulates as white mounds on the desert islands where birds such as pelicans live along the coasts of Peru and Chile.

It was once one of the world's most valuable commodities, and Bolivia, Peru and Chile fought over its control in the 1879-1883 War of the Pacific.

(Reporting by Diego Ore; writing by Terry Wade; editing by Mohammad Zargham)