Traveling through Miami.

I am heading to Miami, with the final destination of the Florida Keys to shoot the product line for a friend  who is launching her webiste.

This is my first time traveling to the Keys, and I look forward to spending a week working and playing.

The last time I flew into Miami, I was returning from La Paz, Bolivia after photographing a total solar eclipse on the altiplano out side city of Huachacalla. I was traveling with my sister and she was unaware to my drug induced shenanigans of smuggling of coca leaf  back to the States through Miami Customs. Now, it wasn’t a massive amount, but certainly enough to provide a couple of months stash to add a kick to my joints that I smoked regularly at the time.

I had been chewing coca leave since our arrival in La Paz ten days earlier and since it is not illegal in Bolivia it was everywhere. I felt the obvious thing was to bring some of the “local flavor” when I returned from the trip.

I was more blatant in how I transported the product than I when I smuggled ganja back from Jamaica three years earlier.

In my self-obsessed chemical thinking,  my need to have coca leaf to smoke when I got home didn’t out weigh the risk of the consequences of getting caught. Not to mention the angst, paranoia and fear I endured going through customs, even with my sister as an unsuspecting decoy .This was clearly another example of my chemical selfishness of my drug days.

It’s a relief these days that I don’t have to take all the risks involved of making sure I am chemically stocked when traveling…either down the street or across the country.