Smuggling Cocaine During a Coup: The Bolivia Taxi Story

By Hank Cooper
The Bolivia Trip That Shouldn’t Have Worked This Bolivia drug smuggling story is hard to believe—even for me. At 23, I met a man named Bernie. Within a short time, we went from strangers to partners in a plan that had no business working. We were in La Paz during political unrest, right in the middle of a coup. Our goal was simple: move cocaine out of the country. Our method was even simpler. We hired a taxi to drive us from La Paz to Lima—a 650-mile journey across borders during instability. No elaborate disguise, no complex network. Just confidence, timing, and a driver willing to take the trip. Stories about cocaine trafficking in South America often sound complex and highly organized. This wasn’t. That’s what made it both absurd and incredibly risky. At one point, we even stopped at Tiwanaku, an ancient site that felt completely out of place in the middle of what we were doing. This Bolivia drug smuggling story should have ended badly in a dozen different ways. It didn’t—and that only made the next risk easier to take.
Location: Bolivia

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