Want to make $120,000 on your next beach vacation?

by Jerry Guo on

Bluefield, Nicaragua isn’t in any travel guides. After all, the bars and beaches aren’t anything you couldn’t find in more American-friendly outlets like neighboring Cancun.

Which is why you’re really missing. You see, even though 85% of the 50,000 people who live in this beach-side town are unemployed, you’ll find lush mansions and pimpin’ cars. Why? It all comes down to location, location, location.

Each day, something like 35 kilograms of pure cocaine washes up on its shore. Turns out, Bluefield is basically the bull’s eye for coke that gets tossed overboard on runs from Columbia to the US coast. Here’s what one local had to say about their favorite hobby, “People here now go beachcombing for miles, they walk until the find packets. Even the lobster fisherman now go out with the pretence of fishing but really they are looking for la langosta blanca – the white lobster.”

So if you want to boost your next paycheck, check out this great article about the place.

One for the Road: Our Dumb World – Onion’s Atlas

by Kelly Amabile on

I just finished listening to some short clips from the audio book version of the Onion’s new atlas of planet earth, aptly titled Our Dumb World. After a short introduction, it begins: “Here are audio clips from some of the countries that matter – France: One nation above God.” It goes on to share important facts about France that you really ought to know. For example, that the leading cause of death is turtle neck asphyxiation. It doesn’t get any nicer. While rattling off the facts about Bolivia, the narrator stops to blow a line of cocaine.

In true Onion style, the book prides itself on offering up incorrect statistics on all of the Earth’s independent nations. (They’re just not sure how many there are.) And they guarantee that once you finish listening to the audio book or reading the hardcover, you will, of course, be the smartest person in your dorm room, carpool or cell block. This is anything but your average atlas.

Good Bye, Cocaine. Hello Coca!

by Iva Skoch on

Bolivia, the world’s third largest cocaine producer, has escaped US drug sanctions because it met the counter-narcotics commitment of eradicating at least 5,000 hectares (12,360 acres) of coca crop. According to Reuters, cocaine seizures were up 17 percent to 11 tonnes in Bolivia from October 2006 to May 2007, while coca leaf seizures increased by 48 percent. However, this could paradoxically be the result of higher production of cocaine.

Last year, the US imposed a “zero cocaine, but not zero coca” policy, allowing coca growers to develop a market for legal coca products. Bolivians believe that coca leaves are healthy. They have chewed them for centuries as a mild stimulant that reduces hunger pangs and altitude sickness.

Seems to me that Bolivians will have a hard time importing legal coca leaves to the US arguing that Americans need to cure their hunger pangs. Hunger is quite possibly the last thing Americans need cured.

However, I was surprised to find that you can buy coca tea in the US on ebay.com. I was even more surprised to find that they mix coca leaves with, of all things, chamomile. “Sleepy time, brought to you by coca.” It is a strange, conflicted world we live in, folks.