Whether or not Red Bull or the Bolivian government sponsor the Syrian army is hard to call, but that they had been partaking in one or the other in huge quantities was a given. They were wired, off their collective tits.
An hour later, their officer turns up. He’s twenty, max, and he’s sweating, has palpitations and eyes bigger than the supermoon. He agrees to look at our photos and seems to understand that we’re something he’s probably never encountered before… tourists. Another hour of idle banter is a challenge with neither of us speaking each other’s language but it doesn’t deter him.
Eventually, at about one o’clock in the morning, we waved good bye to the underage commandos and followed a rough sketch that the young officer. It took us to a rocky beach that we could drive onto and park up with the sound of a contented sea slapping at the rocks to lull us to sleep. Out of nowhere, two men appear out of the dark. They claimed they were plain-clothed police officers. When I asked them for I.D., they showed me their weapons.
It was obvious sleep was still some way off. A protracted conversation and many mobile phone calls later and they eventually conceded we were not providing laser targeting or photographing anything. As dawn arrived they left. They left and we slept on the beach with permission from the police. My wife cried uncontrollably with shock and relief. I can’t even think of the horrors she’d imagined might happen.
The sunrise soon convinced us it was time to move on and we packed up and drove down the coast. Almost every kilometer along the whole drive was a military installation of some kind. Rocket launchers permanently manned were about every 3km. Not the nicest stretch of coast I’ve ever driven down if I’m honest, but, there was without a doubt a bit of wind swell. Around the next bend a small bay opened out, a few families BBQ-ing in their chadors and burkhars and me dusting off my board and jumping in to hit a little wedge in the middle of the bay. It was tiny, it was gutless, it was onshore but by Christ it was surfing. Strange looks aside I had a blast and hoped I’d surfed away enough of the last 24hrs for both of us.
