📸 Photo

29
MIKE

The tours and my new tienda continued to do well. When I got out of prison, I wanted to have some money saved up so that I wouldn't have to go back to trafficking, but I knew if I had the cash in my hands, I would spend it on partying with the tourists. I decided that it would be safer to have everything tied up in assets, so I began to look around for other ways to invest my money. Eventually, I chose to buy another prison cell, on the ground floor in Alamos. Because of its four-star rating, the prices in Alamos rarely went down, so it was a good investment. However, rather than renting it out, I converted it into a restaurant.

Setting up a restaurant was a lot cheaper than setting up a shop because I didn't have to invest money to purchase stock, apart from the food for the day. I didn't need to provide tables or chairs either, because the section already had them. We had signed a deal with the Bolivian distributors of Coca-Cola - we would sell only their soft drinks and, in return, they loaned us tables, chairs and umbrellas, as well as providing cash that was to be used for improving the inmates' living conditions. I only needed a cooker, some plates and some plastic knives and forks, which I already owned. The restaurant soon started to do well, and it was obvious that I would need some help, which is how I became close friends with Mike.

Mike was one of the biggest personalities in the prison. When I met him, he was fifty years old and had grey hair that ran down past his waist. He tied it in a ponytail, which made him look like an old hippy. Two years later, after the night he went crazy, he shaved off all his hair in order to start his life over again. When people kept commenting on how young he looked, he decided to lower his age to forty and keep his hair that way.