Here are photos from yesterday's expedition to the border, courtesy of my trusty new digital cam. It was surreal to actually be There.

You know - "There": That magical South American place you grow up hearing about, where the cocaine that ends up on America's coffee tables is born.

It was a long day, consisting of two flights on a prop plane, and five helicopter rides, to-and-from the sembradios - the drug-cultivated sites confiscated by the military.

A story went out on the wires this morning, but for now...I'll let the pictures do the talking:

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First, let's back up a bit - this is my neighborhood, along with the Avila I've mentioned (keep in mind it keeps climbing past the clouds). Indeed, Caracas is a craptacular city caught in a spectacular location:






Here's Lake Maracaibo, from the prop plane. (If you look on a map, it's that inlet on the west part of the country.) I want you to remember this picture the next time you hear Chavez rant and rave about the environment...even if this ecological disaster predates him considerably. Those black patches are oil, and they're everywhere.




Yesterday's prop plane...straight out of Major League, minus the duct tape.




Why'd we land here? It's just a bunch of helicopters. We're not actually gonna fly in those things, right?




Crap.




View from the Super Puma. The pilots have way too much fun in these things, banking left and right 45 degrees. And yes, they were probably doing it to fuck with us.




Imagine what this room smelled like...




Inbound fighters!




The deforrested areas were used to grow coca leaves. The smoke is a pile being burned by the military.





Waitaminute, that's not a tree...?





Here it is, folks. All the cocaine you'll never enjoy. The shrubs are coca plants, and here we have a pile being burned.




The plants are harvested under the cover of trees so they're harder to spot from the air, and the trees are just right to allow the necessary sunlight for growth.





We had about 40 armed personnel with us. You're not gonna believe this, but they don't consider confiscated cocaine ranges "safe."




Soldiers weighing coca leaves at the nearby makeshift processing lab.





Inside the lab, ground leaves collected in barrels - now doused in gasoline. ...Why would they do a thing like that? This spot is about 200 meters from the Colombian border.





BOOM! Correction - that spot was about 200 meters from the Colombian border. I would have had a better shot of the initial explosion, taking cover behind the tree, but the force was so strong it knocked me on my ass.





No more drug lab...




No seriously, that fucker is gone. Not comin' back.




I added this one just to make Hole suffer...




Soldiers ripping more plants out of the ground...




A funny thing happened once they blew up the lab...suddenly, the soldiers got nervous and agitated and started herding us back towards the choppers. The words "colombianos" and "paramilitarios" were thrown around. Good times, all around.




See? Nervous, agitated...




I'd like to introduce you to my new posse. Kindly don't fuck with us.




Because I stayed behind and interviewed the general - because I am a douchebag and do not understand Spanish until I hear everything twice - I missed the reporter helicopter out of the zone. Guess which one I rode out on instead.





And guess if it had FUCKING DOORS. (Yes, that's my shoe hanging out.)





Chillin'





El general, enjoying the view; me, crapping my pants.




This one takes me back to 'Nam. Were you in the shit?




Anyways, that was my fun in the mountains and jungle yesterday. If/when the story gets picked up, I'll post it - so all two of you can have a better idea of the context. Thank you and good night.