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SAN PEDRO PRISON TOURS

After Yasheeda left, I was in a state of shock for several weeks. I was too numb even to think about killing myself. I didn't need to kill myself, anyway; I already felt like I was dead inside. The only things that made me aware that I was alive during that time were regular visits from Sylvia, who continued to keep a watchful eye over me, and Ricardo's friendship.

The Chilean car deal went wrong, so Abregon and I lost our money. After a month I was forced to sell my room in Pinos and move into Alamos in order to pay my lawyers' fees. Transferring my possessions into a new place helped me to face up to the fact that this was going to be my home for the next five years. I began the appeal process immediately because the sentence had to be certified by a superior court — if an appeal wasn't lodged, they assumed you were guilty and could increase your sentence.

Gradually, I started to come out of my depression. As I did so, I discovered that although Yasheeda was gone, she had left behind a gift for me: the tourists. At first, my only visitors were a handful of Israelis who had heard about me through Yasheeda and her friends. However, La Paz is a small city with only a few hotels and bars catering to foreign tourists, so word spread quickly.

The San Pedro prison tours began slowly, but it wasn't long before they really started to take off. My second and third years in San Pedro were the busiest and happiest of my whole life. Tourists began arriving at the gates in larger and larger groups, sometimes up to ten or fifteen at a time. When they came, the taxistas would send for me. I would explain to the tourists through the bars that they had to leave their passports with the lieutenant and then he would let them into the