I was living in Chile at the time. A friend and I decided that we wanted to go to Argentina. We were living in Santiago and only had enough money to take the bus as far as La Serena, from where we decided we’d hitchhike. We met up with a couple other girls in La Serena where we piled into the back of an old mining truck, a huge bottle of pisco between the four of us. We sit down, look up and realize there’s another family sitting in the back of the truck, on a couch. So I lean back and prepare to relax and share our alcohol. We’re good and drunk by the time it takes us to get to the pass, and I’m a little sloppy, particularly since I’m drunk sitting in the back of an open mining truck. My elbow hit the lid of the pot that was sitting next to me, so I turned to replace it, and I found out I was sitting next to a vat of cow’s blood. I was grossed out so I sidled to my other side and bumped into something even grosser - there was a full-sized cow’s heart sitting next to me under the towel I had dislodged. Anyway, we got to the pass but the guy driving the truck wasn’t going into Argentina, so we’d have to find our own way over the pass. None of us had a sleeping bag or anything that was warm enough for a night spent in the Andes mountains, so we thought we’d try to hitch a ride with someone else. We couldn’t find anyone who was going into Argentina that night. We all thought we were going to have to either hitch back to La Serena or freeze to death when a bunch of Chilean border guards show up. We told them they could have our pisco if we could stay at the guard station over night. So they agreed to the bribe (it didn’t hurt that we were a bunch of single girls - we were very, very lucky these guys were inherently good guys) and drove us to the guard station where we all proceeded to get rip-roaring drunk.
When I woke up in the morning, all four of us were sprawled on the floor, which had been covered entirely in mattresses. No one had been assaulted or anything, we were all snug and warm under blankets the guards had given us, and there were two guards sprawled at the doorway with guns. At first I was really creeped out, but then remembered that they had let us play with the guns and handcuffs before we went to sleep. I also remember a bottle full of orange crush and pisco, but that’s about it. Anyway, that morning, we decided we were too hung over to try to find a ride to Argentina, and the border guards offered to give us a ride in their cop cars back to La Serena. So we hopped in, they let us play with the sirens and we got back all safe and sound. Now that I think about it, that was probably one of the stupidest things I ever did, but shit, it makes for a good story.