Oruro and the immigration police

After La Paz my memory is blurry but we somehow made it to Oruro to play our second gig in Bolivia. Everything went well the first hours in the city and we were chilling in our hotel room when we heard a familiar knock.
Outside our door we had not one but four immigration cops. They told us there had been a mistake with our visas and after a few hours we got a call from our tour manager (from the police station where they held him) that we had to leave the country directly or else we were to be deported to Sweden.
"that sucks".
Then they tried tricking us into playing the show anyway by offering some corrupt solution to our problem, but it was so see-through it was ridiculous. They wanted us to pay them money, play the show, get arrested, pay more money and then finaly get deported anyway.

We had to cancel the show in Oruro.

After all this we managed to pull off a good show in Cochabamba (I hope the people that came for the Oruro show got a second chance to see us there). Thanks for a great show and cool "local".
From Cochabamba we went back to Oruro and caught a train going straight to Villazon.

Villazon seemed to be located in a desert, there was sand everywhere. We checked in to the hotel, got drunk and went to a local arcade where we schooled everyone in street fighter.. or maybe we just screamed louder. Either way we had a great time in Villazon until we saw the stage we were supposed to play.
I believe they had put a couple of tables together and then put random pieces of wood on top.. so it was basicly like playing a show on the backs of running cattle. The entire drumkit was moving (even though we had nailed it to the "stage") and if Pontus stepped on the wrong board my drumthrone would tilt and that made for some fun vertical drumming.
After the show we continued having a good time of course and crashed a high school prom (sorry about that one)

The next day: HANGOVER.
Our beloved tourmanager Daniel woke us up at 8am (after 1.3 hours of sleep) and dragged us to the border of Argentina which happened to be 5 blocks away. We stod in line for acouple of hours and got our bags checked throughly. When they were done sniffing our dirty laundry and asking what a drumstick is we made it to our bus just 1 hour late.
7 hours later we arrived in Salta just in time to see the last two bands play their shows before us. The promoters in Salta kicked ass, they were on time, in the right place, had food and everything ready for us. PROPS!
We played a great show in front of a sold-out venue! Great venue, great crowd! Everything was as good as it gets.


Thats all for this update because I have to go get some food.
Have a good time

/John


Step into Pontus Web!


What sweats? The ass sweats!


Pontus and some kid we found


Pan flutes are way bad ass!


The railroad, aint it grand?


Carl making new friends.


The picture says it all...


"Somber, its not just a band. It's a mental institution."